May 28, 2024 • 18 mins
My girlfriend gave me an ultimatum that she was going to Europe, with or without me.
Luckily, I am the Supe Unemployable and the decision to ditch my prestigious job at Best Buy and go backpack Europe for the months was a super easy one to make.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
32 jobs, 10 times being fired, and 22 times leaving under suspicious circumstances.
I am the Super Unemployable. Welcome to my podcast.
Today we're going to talk about the time where I started the summer working
at Best Buy and I ended the summer in Europe. And so here's how the story goes.
(00:21):
I'd recently been, as you can imagine, fired from one of the jobs that I was
working at in Vancouver. and I started applying for more jobs.
I was desperate to get some income.
My goal was to work for one of the big corporations, build up my profile and maybe work my way up.
That was my dream anyway. It's a dream we all tell ourselves, isn't it?
(00:44):
The super unemployed will love to dream about that big corporate gig that we
believe that we could hold on to, get all the respect and the admiration from our peers.
Never really works out that way, does it? Or if it does, we get there and we're
pretty damn unhappy. It's not what we thought it was going to be.
But anyway, so I apply to Best Buy and I go through a multitude of interviews.
(01:07):
I get all the way up to the head of the department, the e-commerce department.
He was an interesting guy. I think he wanted to be a little bit Steve Jobs,
sat back, feet up on the table.
I don't know how I always find people with the feet up on the table.
But, you know, he was a nice guy, but he didn't really ask interview questions.
He asked a lot of questions about where I came from and who I was and really
(01:30):
trying to do one of those deep profile things.
But I'll be honest, when people are asking you those questions,
it's actually a pretty good sign.
It means that your resume was good enough and they're just trying to figure
out if you're a cultural fit.
I played ball. I was wearing my nice suit. I had all all the right answers to
all the right questions and right answers even to the wrong questions and end up getting the job.
(01:52):
And so I started in the e-commerce department of Best Buy.
And at this time, Best Buy was reformatting itself. It had taken a big hit from Amazon. It's 2012.
Amazon's basically taking Best Buy to task by offering more products,
faster service delivery, and it obviously at a cheaper price.
(02:13):
Amazon, or sorry. As you see, I make mistakes in my podcast sometimes.
What you might notice is I do not edit my podcasts. It's one long stream.
So it is unscripted, unedited.
Content. When you listen to this podcast, a little tidbit there.
So anyway, Best Buy is working on Best Buy marketplace.
(02:33):
And this was a fascinating concept because they went outside of just electronics
and they started to offer things like mattresses, guitars, portable walkers.
They had all kinds of things that you'd never think Best Buy would sell.
Certainly you didn't think they would sell it at that time, but Best Buy was
trying to compete with Amazon.
(02:55):
So they They went outside their core competency and they went outside of technology
and televisions, which is of course what Best Buy sells the most of,
and straight into a whole other category of items.
Funny story, at the time, people were buying mattresses off of Best Buy Marketplace.
And when they didn't like them, they were driving them to Best Buys to try to return them.
(03:16):
The store staff had no idea Best Buy Marketplace was even selling mattresses.
And when people showed up, the store staff at Best Buy thought they were crazy and sent them away.
So there was quite the education that needed to go on between the e-comm and
the actual physical stores.
Anyway, I get hired into a much more traditional environment.
(03:38):
Mine was portable electronics, music instruments, which I'm a semi-musician
at heart, having played many instruments throughout my life.
And this category worked really well for me. I was good at it.
I was very good at helping promote and build out product collections for Best Buy e-commerce.
(03:59):
But what you wouldn't know looking at Best Buy, or maybe you might assume if
you are technical, was Best Buy worked on a really antiquated system. It was super outdated.
We basically built collections in spreadsheets and pushed them to the web.
And so what my job consisted of day in and day out was putting product numbers
(04:20):
and product descriptions and translations into spreadsheets,
asking if I could push and then pushing live.
Day in, day out. I hate spreadsheets I love the functionality of them to be
honest I use spreadsheets a lot they're very very functional I just hate being
stuck in them for hours on end,
(04:42):
but I continued on and I pressed forward and it was a good job I worked with
a lot of very smart people that's why I was great at recruiting the location
was one of those you live and work there kind of places they had a yoga room
they had food and a cafeteria materia.
And the campus was kind of outside of where the main center was.
(05:03):
So once you drove there, you basically stayed there throughout the day.
And a lot of people worked late.
The problem was I wasn't really passionate about spreadsheets.
I certainly wasn't passionate about just boosting Best Buy's e-com.
I was really passionate about the tech though, and the e-commerce program as a whole.
(05:23):
And Best Buy struggled with a lot of things at the time. They had issues with
search engine, They had issues with their own internal search.
That people used to find products, they had issues with product collections, etc.
And so I started to map out a lot of really what I thought were really great ideas on how to improve.
And I brought those to my superior at the time. And I presented my ideas.
(05:46):
And he stood and he nodded, actually stood. It turns out it was actually more
of an employee evaluation that I was in.
I thought I was bringing him a bunch of great ideas.
He listened, nodded.
I told him, some arguably some phenomenal e-com
ideas around how to boost seo how to
(06:06):
boost product descriptions how to integrate social media in a more meaningful
way and remember this was 2012 social media wasn't fully integrated with e-commerce
at that point my ideas by and large were revolutionary many of which did get
adopted into best buy just many many years later i would argue many years too late.
But anyway, during this conversation, my manager, he nodded,
(06:31):
nodded, nodded. And I thought maybe I'm getting through.
This is great. Like maybe I could progress my role. I can do more.
And at the end, he basically disregarded everything I said and kind of read
me the riot act about how the fact of I had all these great ideas,
that's fine, but I wasn't actually doing my job very well.
This was a surprise to me. I actually thought I was doing a pretty good job.
(06:52):
But it turns out my spreadsheet pushing skills were not on point. I wasn't fast enough.
I wasn't timely enough in terms of which products I was putting up on the web.
Overall, they just weren't impressed with me. Now, I guess I shouldn't act that surprised.
(07:13):
I remember where everybody else was sitting together at lunch.
I would actually take an apple or a sandwich and I'd go walk around the campus.
I wanted to think about things. I wanted to evaluate life. I didn't want to
just sit there talking more work.
Obviously, they were very passionate about the job and they enjoyed talking best buy.
(07:36):
It just wasn't where my passions were.
Again, a great company, a great job. We can be at a great company.
We can have a great job, but it doesn't mean that we're going to be or should
be or have to be passionate about it, especially when it's somebody else's company.
That, my friends, is one of the truest signs that you are of the super unemployable.
(08:02):
No matter how good a job, no matter how good you think you're doing,
turns out I wasn't, but at the time I thought I was, it doesn't bring you that
sense sense of satisfaction that you're looking for.
And so you find yourself daydreaming, walking, searching for something that's
going to make you happier.
(08:22):
Luckily, I wasn't at Best Buy very long. It wasn't too long after I started
with Best Buy that my girlfriend sat me down and said, Dean, I'm going to Europe.
I'd like you to come with me, but I understand if you can't.
And so I'll never forget the day. We're sitting at a coffee shop,
(08:43):
just having a regular coffee.
And what her reasoning was, was that she needed to travel some more to backpack. pack.
And to be fair, I shouldn't be that shocked by it. We met backpacking in Australia.
That's a story that I'll tell another day. But my girlfriend and I had been
together for quite a few years and we'd done a lot of travel.
(09:05):
But over that last little period, those last few years, while I was being epically
super unemployable, not making
a lot of money, I was trying to work a lot and we traveled a lot less.
Well, she'd gotten tired of it. She had a decent job, saved enough money and was ready to go.
And so obviously at first I was kind of against it. I said to myself,
(09:28):
trying to convince myself, oh, you've got such a great job.
You're working at Best Buy. Everybody will respect you. Why would you leave this job to go to Europe?
And to give some context, she
wanted to go to Europe, not just for two weeks. This wasn't a vacation.
She wanted to backpack through Europe, three months.
And in the end, and again, a story for another time, but we ended up visiting
(09:49):
something like 36 countries or 45.
No, sorry. It was 45 cities, 16 countries all in three months.
It was the greatest trip like ever.
And I'm so glad I ended up going, but at the time I was a little bit freaked out.
Only took me a few days of soul searching in the parking lot,
walking the campus to realize that Best Buy wasn't for me. I was going to need to move on.
(10:14):
And it was about a day earlier that I'd had that conversation with the manager
where he basically dressed me down about how poor of a job I was doing.
So the decision actually became quite easy.
Now, the thing is, we were going to leave in a month. Maybe it was six weeks, but it was very close.
And I think it was September we were going going to leave.
And I needed money and as much money
(10:35):
as I could put together because I was about to quit and go to Europe.
Now I knew because the manager had just spoken to me about how poorly I was
doing that if I went in and said, here's my two weeks notice,
they might've said, just don't come back in tomorrow.
You haven't been here that long. I think I was still under the three month probation at this time.
And I couldn't afford to have that happen. I needed every dime that I could
(10:58):
squeeze out of that place before I went here.
And so our flight, I remember was booked for a Sunday and we made a plan that
I was going to work at Best Buy right up until that Sunday so I could get my last paycheck.
Now, my girlfriend was well-respected at her job.
(11:20):
She told them that she was leaving. They begged her to come back.
They said, we'll keep your job for you.
We'll we'll pay you more, just please don't leave us. Come back when you're done with Europe.
And I can honestly tell you that every job she has ever had,
they have always invited her back, no matter what decision she's made.
(11:41):
Me, on the other hand, that has never happened.
Never once, but that's okay. I've made peace with that as the super unemployable.
So I work right up until the Friday.
Everybody's going for drinks. They're having a good time. I say,
no, I'm good. I'm going to work late.
I worked late and I tied up everything that I could because obviously I'm going
(12:05):
to leave the job in a better place than I found it. At least so I thought. lot.
So I did all the extra work that I could, cleaned up my desk,
cleaned everything up so that it was perfect, immaculate.
So that when I didn't show up on Monday, at the very least, they wouldn't have
been saying, well, this guy, what a slob, or I can't believe he left it like that.
(12:26):
But still, I had not told anybody that I was leaving, not even my manager,
not the VP, none of the people that I was working with on a daily basis.
On Saturday, my girlfriend and I went to the Best Buy because I needed to drop
off the final item, which was my access card.
So we popped in and I thought, hey, you can at least see the Best Buy campus.
(12:47):
We walked around, did a little tour, stopped at the Best Buy vending machine
and bought some headphones for the trip, stopped by my desk,
left my security card and walked out the door.
We took off to Europe the next morning. When we landed in Frankfurt,
it was about 5 a.m. Vancouver time.
(13:09):
We went and got a coffee. I stopped at an internet cafe, I think.
I don't think I had a laptop at that time.
And I wrote an email to Best Buy, letting them know to my managers and everybody
that I would not be coming in that morning. I was quitting.
It was a funky email to write. When I say I left under suspicious circumstances,
(13:30):
I can only imagine what people thought because I mentioned that I was in Europe, in Germany.
I'm not really sure what they knew to make of it or if they knew what to make of it, I should say.
I did find out from a friend of mine, it was a couple weeks after,
that they weren't actually that concerned.
They thought it was strange. They didn't really understand what happened,
(13:53):
but apparently they were going to fire me anyway.
The reason they were going to fire me was because I was not a cultural fit.
I did not fit the Best Buy mold.
I was the guy wandering the campus thinking about other businesses and other
ideas while everybody was together having lunch.
I was a bit of an outcast and I'm actually a very social guy but at Best Buy
(14:18):
I could not find the will or the passion to be part of that team in a meaningful
way. And I'm okay with that.
It did sting a little bit. You kind of leave and you think, oh,
they're going to miss me.
You know, what are they going to do without me? You find out,
you know what, they're probably going to fire me anyway.
But those were the circumstances I left. I was in Germany now drinking two euro
(14:42):
beer, walking the streets and trying to figure my life out.
I was 30. I just turned 30 when I went to Europe and I can say it was one of
the best trips we ever did.
And again, in a future podcast, I'll take you through Europe and how beneficial
it was to the mindset of the super unemployable.
(15:02):
But we backpacked around, saw things, experienced things that never would have
even crossed my mind had I stayed in Vancouver.
And my life would have been no better off had I stayed at Best Buy.
And by all accounts, if it's true, I was going to get fired anyway. So life worked out.
(15:23):
What I learned working at Best Buy is that you can be there for somebody's mission.
You can work under their dreams.
I don't even know how else to put it. I mean, you're following somebody else.
That's essentially what it is.
And if you believe down in the core in everything that they're doing,
(15:44):
that company is doing, then maybe you can make it work.
I worked with a lot of smart people who lived and breathed Best Buy.
And just because I couldn't didn't mean it was wrong or that I was wrong or
anybody was inefficient or deficient or whatever words you want to put around
it. It just means I didn't fit.
And I think to all of you out there listening to this podcast who feel like
(16:08):
you don't fit, I can promise you that you do fit in the super unemployable.
We are a very very large
group that walk around and
every now and then bump into one another and if you
say to them i'm super unemployable if they are as well they will immediately
put up their hand i have tried it over and over again and i can tell you every
(16:32):
entrepreneur i've ever met when i mention the word super unemployable they nod
and say yep me too and so you can chase that corporate job,
you can look for the prestige of working at a.
Corporate company like Best Buy or any other number of Fortune 500s.
Is Best Buy a Fortune 500? I honestly have no idea.
(16:55):
What I can say though, is it felt like I was working for a Fortune 500 at the time.
It felt good until it didn't.
And it was at that point that I was so glad and so happy that my girlfriend
had made the choice that she was going to go to Europe with with, or without me.
Because had she not, I wouldn't have had the courage to leave.
(17:16):
Now again, I didn't need to leave under such suspicious circumstances, but I did.
And I had a really great story to tell. And I can tell you, I tell stories from
Europe a lot more often than I've ever told a story from Best Buy.
And to you, my friends, share your stories with me.
Have you chased the corporate dream? Have you tried to ascend up the ladder?
(17:40):
Have you even made it? Have you been at the top of your game and then decided
to throw it all away because you feel super unemployable?
You either were fired at the top of your game or let yourself slip to the point
where you left, quit, or did you also leave under suspicious circumstances?
(18:01):
See, the cool thing is as super unemployable, we don't have to be like everybody
else. We get to write our own rules.
And I'll be so excited to chat with you. I open the floor.
In future episodes, I cannot wait to interview other fellow super unemployable.
So you can share your stories with me. You can share your stories with the audience
(18:22):
and together we can build our community and we can build our community strong.
That's it for me today. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.
32 jobs, 10 times being fired, and 22 times leaving under suspicious circumstances.
I am the Super Unemployable. Welcome to my podcast.
Today we're going to talk about the time where I started the summer working
at Best Buy and I ended the summer in Europe. And so here's how the story goes.
(00:21):
I'd recently been, as you can imagine, fired from one of the jobs that I was
working at in Vancouver. and I started applying for more jobs.
I was desperate to get some income.
My goal was to work for one of the big corporations, build up my profile and maybe work my way up.
That was my dream anyway. It's a dream we all tell ourselves, isn't it?
(00:44):
The super unemployed will love to dream about that big corporate gig that we
believe that we could hold on to, get all the respect and the admiration from our peers.
Never really works out that way, does it? Or if it does, we get there and we're
pretty damn unhappy. It's not what we thought it was going to be.
But anyway, so I apply to Best Buy and I go through a multitude of interviews.
(01:07):
I get all the way up to the head of the department, the e-commerce department.
He was an interesting guy. I think he wanted to be a little bit Steve Jobs,
sat back, feet up on the table.
I don't know how I always find people with the feet up on the table.
But, you know, he was a nice guy, but he didn't really ask interview questions.
He asked a lot of questions about where I came from and who I was and really
(01:30):
trying to do one of those deep profile things.
But I'll be honest, when people are asking you those questions,
it's actually a pretty good sign.
It means that your resume was good enough and they're just trying to figure
out if you're a cultural fit.
I played ball. I was wearing my nice suit. I had all all the right answers to
all the right questions and right answers even to the wrong questions and end up getting the job.
(01:52):
And so I started in the e-commerce department of Best Buy.
And at this time, Best Buy was reformatting itself. It had taken a big hit from Amazon. It's 2012.
Amazon's basically taking Best Buy to task by offering more products,
faster service delivery, and it obviously at a cheaper price.
(02:13):
Amazon, or sorry. As you see, I make mistakes in my podcast sometimes.
What you might notice is I do not edit my podcasts. It's one long stream.
So it is unscripted, unedited.
Content. When you listen to this podcast, a little tidbit there.
So anyway, Best Buy is working on Best Buy marketplace.
(02:33):
And this was a fascinating concept because they went outside of just electronics
and they started to offer things like mattresses, guitars, portable walkers.
They had all kinds of things that you'd never think Best Buy would sell.
Certainly you didn't think they would sell it at that time, but Best Buy was
trying to compete with Amazon.
(02:55):
So they They went outside their core competency and they went outside of technology
and televisions, which is of course what Best Buy sells the most of,
and straight into a whole other category of items.
Funny story, at the time, people were buying mattresses off of Best Buy Marketplace.
And when they didn't like them, they were driving them to Best Buys to try to return them.
(03:16):
The store staff had no idea Best Buy Marketplace was even selling mattresses.
And when people showed up, the store staff at Best Buy thought they were crazy and sent them away.
So there was quite the education that needed to go on between the e-comm and
the actual physical stores.
Anyway, I get hired into a much more traditional environment.
(03:38):
Mine was portable electronics, music instruments, which I'm a semi-musician
at heart, having played many instruments throughout my life.
And this category worked really well for me. I was good at it.
I was very good at helping promote and build out product collections for Best Buy e-commerce.
(03:59):
But what you wouldn't know looking at Best Buy, or maybe you might assume if
you are technical, was Best Buy worked on a really antiquated system. It was super outdated.
We basically built collections in spreadsheets and pushed them to the web.
And so what my job consisted of day in and day out was putting product numbers
(04:20):
and product descriptions and translations into spreadsheets,
asking if I could push and then pushing live.
Day in, day out. I hate spreadsheets I love the functionality of them to be
honest I use spreadsheets a lot they're very very functional I just hate being
stuck in them for hours on end,
(04:42):
but I continued on and I pressed forward and it was a good job I worked with
a lot of very smart people that's why I was great at recruiting the location
was one of those you live and work there kind of places they had a yoga room
they had food and a cafeteria materia.
And the campus was kind of outside of where the main center was.
(05:03):
So once you drove there, you basically stayed there throughout the day.
And a lot of people worked late.
The problem was I wasn't really passionate about spreadsheets.
I certainly wasn't passionate about just boosting Best Buy's e-com.
I was really passionate about the tech though, and the e-commerce program as a whole.
(05:23):
And Best Buy struggled with a lot of things at the time. They had issues with
search engine, They had issues with their own internal search.
That people used to find products, they had issues with product collections, etc.
And so I started to map out a lot of really what I thought were really great ideas on how to improve.
And I brought those to my superior at the time. And I presented my ideas.
(05:46):
And he stood and he nodded, actually stood. It turns out it was actually more
of an employee evaluation that I was in.
I thought I was bringing him a bunch of great ideas.
He listened, nodded.
I told him, some arguably some phenomenal e-com
ideas around how to boost seo how to
(06:06):
boost product descriptions how to integrate social media in a more meaningful
way and remember this was 2012 social media wasn't fully integrated with e-commerce
at that point my ideas by and large were revolutionary many of which did get
adopted into best buy just many many years later i would argue many years too late.
But anyway, during this conversation, my manager, he nodded,
(06:31):
nodded, nodded. And I thought maybe I'm getting through.
This is great. Like maybe I could progress my role. I can do more.
And at the end, he basically disregarded everything I said and kind of read
me the riot act about how the fact of I had all these great ideas,
that's fine, but I wasn't actually doing my job very well.
This was a surprise to me. I actually thought I was doing a pretty good job.
(06:52):
But it turns out my spreadsheet pushing skills were not on point. I wasn't fast enough.
I wasn't timely enough in terms of which products I was putting up on the web.
Overall, they just weren't impressed with me. Now, I guess I shouldn't act that surprised.
(07:13):
I remember where everybody else was sitting together at lunch.
I would actually take an apple or a sandwich and I'd go walk around the campus.
I wanted to think about things. I wanted to evaluate life. I didn't want to
just sit there talking more work.
Obviously, they were very passionate about the job and they enjoyed talking best buy.
(07:36):
It just wasn't where my passions were.
Again, a great company, a great job. We can be at a great company.
We can have a great job, but it doesn't mean that we're going to be or should
be or have to be passionate about it, especially when it's somebody else's company.
That, my friends, is one of the truest signs that you are of the super unemployable.
(08:02):
No matter how good a job, no matter how good you think you're doing,
turns out I wasn't, but at the time I thought I was, it doesn't bring you that
sense sense of satisfaction that you're looking for.
And so you find yourself daydreaming, walking, searching for something that's
going to make you happier.
(08:22):
Luckily, I wasn't at Best Buy very long. It wasn't too long after I started
with Best Buy that my girlfriend sat me down and said, Dean, I'm going to Europe.
I'd like you to come with me, but I understand if you can't.
And so I'll never forget the day. We're sitting at a coffee shop,
(08:43):
just having a regular coffee.
And what her reasoning was, was that she needed to travel some more to backpack. pack.
And to be fair, I shouldn't be that shocked by it. We met backpacking in Australia.
That's a story that I'll tell another day. But my girlfriend and I had been
together for quite a few years and we'd done a lot of travel.
(09:05):
But over that last little period, those last few years, while I was being epically
super unemployable, not making
a lot of money, I was trying to work a lot and we traveled a lot less.
Well, she'd gotten tired of it. She had a decent job, saved enough money and was ready to go.
And so obviously at first I was kind of against it. I said to myself,
(09:28):
trying to convince myself, oh, you've got such a great job.
You're working at Best Buy. Everybody will respect you. Why would you leave this job to go to Europe?
And to give some context, she
wanted to go to Europe, not just for two weeks. This wasn't a vacation.
She wanted to backpack through Europe, three months.
And in the end, and again, a story for another time, but we ended up visiting
(09:49):
something like 36 countries or 45.
No, sorry. It was 45 cities, 16 countries all in three months.
It was the greatest trip like ever.
And I'm so glad I ended up going, but at the time I was a little bit freaked out.
Only took me a few days of soul searching in the parking lot,
walking the campus to realize that Best Buy wasn't for me. I was going to need to move on.
(10:14):
And it was about a day earlier that I'd had that conversation with the manager
where he basically dressed me down about how poor of a job I was doing.
So the decision actually became quite easy.
Now, the thing is, we were going to leave in a month. Maybe it was six weeks, but it was very close.
And I think it was September we were going going to leave.
And I needed money and as much money
(10:35):
as I could put together because I was about to quit and go to Europe.
Now I knew because the manager had just spoken to me about how poorly I was
doing that if I went in and said, here's my two weeks notice,
they might've said, just don't come back in tomorrow.
You haven't been here that long. I think I was still under the three month probation at this time.
And I couldn't afford to have that happen. I needed every dime that I could
(10:58):
squeeze out of that place before I went here.
And so our flight, I remember was booked for a Sunday and we made a plan that
I was going to work at Best Buy right up until that Sunday so I could get my last paycheck.
Now, my girlfriend was well-respected at her job.
(11:20):
She told them that she was leaving. They begged her to come back.
They said, we'll keep your job for you.
We'll we'll pay you more, just please don't leave us. Come back when you're done with Europe.
And I can honestly tell you that every job she has ever had,
they have always invited her back, no matter what decision she's made.
(11:41):
Me, on the other hand, that has never happened.
Never once, but that's okay. I've made peace with that as the super unemployable.
So I work right up until the Friday.
Everybody's going for drinks. They're having a good time. I say,
no, I'm good. I'm going to work late.
I worked late and I tied up everything that I could because obviously I'm going
(12:05):
to leave the job in a better place than I found it. At least so I thought. lot.
So I did all the extra work that I could, cleaned up my desk,
cleaned everything up so that it was perfect, immaculate.
So that when I didn't show up on Monday, at the very least, they wouldn't have
been saying, well, this guy, what a slob, or I can't believe he left it like that.
(12:26):
But still, I had not told anybody that I was leaving, not even my manager,
not the VP, none of the people that I was working with on a daily basis.
On Saturday, my girlfriend and I went to the Best Buy because I needed to drop
off the final item, which was my access card.
So we popped in and I thought, hey, you can at least see the Best Buy campus.
(12:47):
We walked around, did a little tour, stopped at the Best Buy vending machine
and bought some headphones for the trip, stopped by my desk,
left my security card and walked out the door.
We took off to Europe the next morning. When we landed in Frankfurt,
it was about 5 a.m. Vancouver time.
(13:09):
We went and got a coffee. I stopped at an internet cafe, I think.
I don't think I had a laptop at that time.
And I wrote an email to Best Buy, letting them know to my managers and everybody
that I would not be coming in that morning. I was quitting.
It was a funky email to write. When I say I left under suspicious circumstances,
(13:30):
I can only imagine what people thought because I mentioned that I was in Europe, in Germany.
I'm not really sure what they knew to make of it or if they knew what to make of it, I should say.
I did find out from a friend of mine, it was a couple weeks after,
that they weren't actually that concerned.
They thought it was strange. They didn't really understand what happened,
(13:53):
but apparently they were going to fire me anyway.
The reason they were going to fire me was because I was not a cultural fit.
I did not fit the Best Buy mold.
I was the guy wandering the campus thinking about other businesses and other
ideas while everybody was together having lunch.
I was a bit of an outcast and I'm actually a very social guy but at Best Buy
(14:18):
I could not find the will or the passion to be part of that team in a meaningful
way. And I'm okay with that.
It did sting a little bit. You kind of leave and you think, oh,
they're going to miss me.
You know, what are they going to do without me? You find out,
you know what, they're probably going to fire me anyway.
But those were the circumstances I left. I was in Germany now drinking two euro
(14:42):
beer, walking the streets and trying to figure my life out.
I was 30. I just turned 30 when I went to Europe and I can say it was one of
the best trips we ever did.
And again, in a future podcast, I'll take you through Europe and how beneficial
it was to the mindset of the super unemployable.
(15:02):
But we backpacked around, saw things, experienced things that never would have
even crossed my mind had I stayed in Vancouver.
And my life would have been no better off had I stayed at Best Buy.
And by all accounts, if it's true, I was going to get fired anyway. So life worked out.
(15:23):
What I learned working at Best Buy is that you can be there for somebody's mission.
You can work under their dreams.
I don't even know how else to put it. I mean, you're following somebody else.
That's essentially what it is.
And if you believe down in the core in everything that they're doing,
(15:44):
that company is doing, then maybe you can make it work.
I worked with a lot of smart people who lived and breathed Best Buy.
And just because I couldn't didn't mean it was wrong or that I was wrong or
anybody was inefficient or deficient or whatever words you want to put around
it. It just means I didn't fit.
And I think to all of you out there listening to this podcast who feel like
(16:08):
you don't fit, I can promise you that you do fit in the super unemployable.
We are a very very large
group that walk around and
every now and then bump into one another and if you
say to them i'm super unemployable if they are as well they will immediately
put up their hand i have tried it over and over again and i can tell you every
(16:32):
entrepreneur i've ever met when i mention the word super unemployable they nod
and say yep me too and so you can chase that corporate job,
you can look for the prestige of working at a.
Corporate company like Best Buy or any other number of Fortune 500s.
Is Best Buy a Fortune 500? I honestly have no idea.
(16:55):
What I can say though, is it felt like I was working for a Fortune 500 at the time.
It felt good until it didn't.
And it was at that point that I was so glad and so happy that my girlfriend
had made the choice that she was going to go to Europe with with, or without me.
Because had she not, I wouldn't have had the courage to leave.
(17:16):
Now again, I didn't need to leave under such suspicious circumstances, but I did.
And I had a really great story to tell. And I can tell you, I tell stories from
Europe a lot more often than I've ever told a story from Best Buy.
And to you, my friends, share your stories with me.
Have you chased the corporate dream? Have you tried to ascend up the ladder?
(17:40):
Have you even made it? Have you been at the top of your game and then decided
to throw it all away because you feel super unemployable?
You either were fired at the top of your game or let yourself slip to the point
where you left, quit, or did you also leave under suspicious circumstances?
(18:01):
See, the cool thing is as super unemployable, we don't have to be like everybody
else. We get to write our own rules.
And I'll be so excited to chat with you. I open the floor.
In future episodes, I cannot wait to interview other fellow super unemployable.
So you can share your stories with me. You can share your stories with the audience
(18:22):
and together we can build our community and we can build our community strong.
That's it for me today. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.
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