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Ugh.

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The New Boss

It's weird being the person who people are trying to impress and get hired by. I put up a Craigslist ad yesterday to try to find painters for the summer and immediately my inbox was swamped with emails and my phone was ringing off the hook. I literally laid in bed from 8-10 this morning watching Scrubs on my computer and answering the phone every ten minutes. I wasn't expecting this big of a response so quickly, so to try to get some semblance of control over the situation I asked everyone who called me to send their resume to my email address so I could look it over. The majority of the guys who called me were of Latin descent, which is cool because so am I, but also a bit troubling because they didn't have the greatest grasp of the language. A couple responses were from legitimate painters, one from a guy who ran his own painting company for like 11 years and now is looking to work for me. I think he could be either a really good hire or a dangerous hire, as he could either teach me and my crew a lot and keep the crew producing work efficiently, or he could take off as soon as he finds another gig with better wages.

My two favorite emails were from established painters who either feel threatened by me or just hate college painters. I was going to summarize them, but I think copying and pasting them will be more effective, as well as adding my responses.

Email #1

Thanks to pathetic painters like yourselves... We have tons of CORRECTIVE work to fix your screwups. Thank God for all the college "professionals" painting for keeping everyone else in business. When you pay people $8-$14/hr you get exactly that quality of work.

Good luck... you need it

My response:

Hi Mr. (removed),

Thank you for your email. I'm a hard working 20 year old trying to pay for my college tuition. Myself and all my painters will be trained and certified by Sherwin Williams before we can think about painting a house. If you have any jobs that you are unable to get to, I'd would be very grateful for a referral. If not, I hope that my screwups provide enough corrective work for you and your crew. Also, any advice you might have to a new painter would be very much appreciated, as you've noted yourself I could use some help and luck this summer. Thanks again and good luck this summer.

Email #2

We have a group of ten small companies watching for you to lie and miss lead customers. Your lead in of collage kids making a difference has gotta old . The public first questions will be what collage does your workers attend ? So drop off your three ladders and two kids that know zone about painting and sleep well at night. 8 to 14 dollars per hour what a scam. We'll be watching

My response:

Hi Manor Painting Company,

Thank you for your email. I'm glad to see that there are professional painters in the area as well as my college painters. If you receive any jobs that you can't get to, I'd greatly appreciate the referral. If not, any advice you might have for a new painter will be very much appreciated, especially with the 35 years experience that your employees have. Thank you again for your email and good luck this summer.

I guess I have enemies.

My brother doesn't always snore but when he does he is a monster. I'm scared.

Goal Crushing Attitudes

As I mentioned before, I had Sales Training for my painting job this past weekend. Not to get too mushy on you or toot my own horn too much, but I think I'm going to do pretty well this summer with this job. I think it's one of the better things that's going on with me these days. It provides me with a great distraction from everything else that might be bothering me, be it schoolwork, housing issues, or occasional problems with the girlfriend. I'm honestly very excited that I have the chance to run my own legitimate business this summer. I've had a couple other businesses that I've started in the past, namely my lacrosse stinging, building maintenance, and firewood selling jobs, but this is the first one that forces me to hire employees, market to customers, manage my employees, produce work, and actively sell my services to potential customers. I know that it's going to be really tough at times, and I know I'm going to hate it some days, but I think that for the most part I'm going to enjoy it very much. Either way it will be a really good experience for me, not just for business or to put on my resume or whatever but to try to determine and push the limits of what I can do. I'll admit, I'm nervous about how I'm going to find leads and how I'm going to react when I find myself by myself in a customer's home trying to prove to them that I am the person they should trust with their hard earned money. I'm a college kid who has hardly ever painted before, much less painted a whole house and managed a crew of other college kids, why would someone ever think that it is a good idea to entrust me with their money? It's really mind blowing when I think about it, the fact that people are going to be trusting me to paint the biggest investment they've ever made, but the thought also excites me and I know that they won't be making a mistake.

I'm really excited about this job. My executive came up to me after Sales Training ended and told me that he thought I did really well during training and that he thought I was going to kill it this summer. I'm not being cocky, but I know he's right.

I guess I'm wicked tough

I got my wisdom teeth taken out at 11:00 today. Other than feeling some momentary dizziness when I got out of the dentist's chair, I've felt pretty much fine. I haven't had any pain, and the Vicodin I took that was supposed to knock me out has done nothing. I'm almost disappointed, I was interested to see how being on Vicodin feels but I got nothing. The only thing I've noticed is that my mouth is full of blood, and when I spit it is true blood diluted with a drop of saliva. In the word's of Dr. Cox, "I am bulletproof!"

So I missed a few days of quotes. Whatever, I've been busy. Yesterday was the one year anniversary with the girlfriend, so that was cool, and today was my first day of Sales Training for my painting job. I went to bed at 2:30 in Providence (RI) and woke up at 5:30 to drive to Brockton to sit in a ballroom in the Holiday Inn from 7:30 AM to 6:00 PM. Tomorrow we do it again. I hope to get more sleep tonight. I'll make up for the missed quotes if you're good and if you even care, you heartless reader.