I felt unmoored and directionless after my high school job at Babbage’s dissolved at the end of 1997. I’d met my wonderful wife there—we’d go on to get married in 2003—but Babbage’s had been the only job I’d known. When the doors finally shut, I wasn’t sure what to do. I skipped the typical teenager process of wandering around the mall filling out dozens of applications for various stores—I’d gotten the job at Babbage’s merely by asking for it. Now I had no idea how to get another with nearly the same level of awesome.
For a while I slummed it at Electronics Boutique, since my Babbage’s experience was enough to get me hired with only a quick interview. It just wasn’t the same. This was long before both EB and Babbage’s were swallowed by the Gamestop monster, and although the merchandise was similar, the atmosphere was totally different. EB wasn’t anywhere near as fun as Babbage’s (probably because I was more used to slacking with friends than working), so I kept up the search for the perfect replacement job.
Back then, tech support seemed like a viable career option. Just a few years before, Microsoft had very famously hired armies of phone warriors to assist Windows 95 buyers with installing and working with the new operating system. Now Windows 98 had just launched a few months prior, and I had some relevant experience on the phones. Sometimes folks would call into Babbage’s or EB asking for help installing a program they’d bought, and I genuinely enjoyed helping them. It followed, I thought, that actually doing phone support as a job would be a great way to spend my time. I envisioned sitting back in a cubicle with my feet up on the desk, headset on my ear as I snappily answered question after question, earning the immense personal satisfaction one must feel when finishing up a workday filled from start to finish with the smiles and thanks of people you’d helped.
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