Some of the people close to me are asking why I am working online as I got my degree in history from a reputable university in the country. They sometimes ask me why should I not teach in college or study law instead. I always retort that I want to spend time for an interregnum because 15 straight years of studying is exhausting and that I want a relatively high paying job.
During my last year in college though, I already started working. I worked as an associate researcher at a research firm based in Mandaluyong. I was tasked to do primary and secondary forms of business research. Most of our clients are multi-national companies. What I love about my job as a business researcher is talking with people of different colors. Being ambivalent both in written and spoken Spanish, my very common assignment before was to talk to key opinion leaders from Spain and Latin America. I worked for about a year with this company.
When I left the company my next job I had was an online job. I worked as an internet marketer for a design firm based in Illinois. Everything is virtual. What you only need to do is to grasp the essence of competition on search engines (or Google for that matter) and everything will be perfectly fine. Knowing how to compete for a website and strategizing on proven effective techniques in internet marketing are two great ways how to have a meaningful career online. In terms of payment, mind you, my monthly salary at the research firm pales in comparison with that of my online job.
However like any other job, there are some adventures and misadventures along the way. My first online job started smoothly but it ended with huge frustration with my bossy boss. The first month was, of course, a time to get to know the ropes of the business. I was given some materials to read about internet marketing, SEO, online advertising among others. I diligently read these articles and they were helpful. My first task for the month was to send emails to law firms across the United States and Canada. The rejection rate was too high that my boss kept on telling me to produce positive results. He might not be aware that the email template was too boring to read and that he gave me very poor instructions on how to proceed with a fruitful email campaign. He even cut down my time thinking that I was unproductive.
It was then that I realized to be bold in telling him that we should do this and do that in order to attract law firms. He agreed. I also created good content for distribution which became valuable for the law firm website in the long run. And then came the unprecedented numbers of law firms that became interested in our proposal. My boss was satisfied and he brought me back to full-time.
I was able to generate a lot of partners for link exchange, guest blog posting and valuable links for the website. The end result being higher page rank and higher rank on search engine page results for the website. I really gave my best shot because I love what I do and law firm marketing is but a fun to do because of my interest in law.
Misadventures with this job started when my boss became too bossy and too annoying to communicate with. His presence on Gmail chat is formidable. Aside from the excessive checking of daily update, he always wanted to see positive results. He is also the most sarcastic person I have ever met on the internet. I can’t generalize that all Americans are like him because I had some American friends before and they are all friendly and easy to go along with. In fact, a lady teammate who became very close to me resigned and left the team because of our bossy and irascible boss. Although he was thousand miles away from us, it seemed that he was standing in front of our computers with that stern look on his face.
Even his personal assistant who is a close friend was not able to escape his wrath. It was a consensus among the members of our team that he is one hell of a boss. Other workers who belong to other teams under him also complained about his attitude, albeit only amongst us. He might not be aware that he is the hot topic of the team or he is just to apathetic to know it. Another worker who resigned because of the boss annoying attitude went as far as saying straight to our boss’ face that he should instead ‘hire Indians whom he can treat that way, and not Filipinos’. Of course, that is a very racist remark but I can’t blame him for saying that.
But the disaster came when he fired me and my close friend who is acting as the team lead and his personal assistant. He fired us out of the blue. He went as far as saying that we lied to him and that I was bloating my time and did nothing for his company. He did not even give the salary of my friend for one month. I got my salary, although decreased by 30%, through pleading him to give what was due me.
The real story behind his false allegations is that because of intermittent internet connection and recurring power outages, my friend was not able to go online at all times that he needed her. Repetitive excuses don’t work with our boss, and we power outages and intermittent internet connection are beyond our control. It was his rule as well that if my friend won’t show up for a day, he will penalize her with a 50 USD decrease in her salary. Yes, my former boss is really crazy.
Now that I and my friend have found new jobs online, the memory of Big Brother Boss is fading away. I have a good boss right now who is better and my friend has her own boss who is kind and generous as well. When we talk about our former boss, we can’t help but regret the days that we were with him because there are a lot of better bosses out there who can give higher payment, kind and understanding and can treat you right as an employee and not a slave. I and my friend are earning higher with our online jobs now than before, without much stress, disappointment and an annoying boss.
Tags: online job, Online job Philippines, SEO work from home, slave driver boss, terror boss, work from home
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