NASHVILLE | Development Showcase

[Dr Nevergold]

^I just have a chip on my shoulder for my experience at Verizon. It was a crappy job, I was there 5 months and literally couldn't take the nonsense. I walked out in the middle of a shift and sent my boss an email that I wasn't coming back. LOL

I feel for those poor people on the phones. Its a brutal operation they have down in Murfreesboro, if any job needs a union it'd be that call center, its one of the few environments where I think having a union would actually save the company money by lowering attrition. They had something like 80% attrition rates when I worked there. I don't even know how they can manage the operating expenses when they spend so much money training employees that leave so quickly.

Since I'm currently employment-free, I don't know that I'd accept another low paying job like VZW to get by. Anything below $40,000 I don't think I could survive on, not in today's cost of living. I find your standards rise when you age. I'm 32 and can't stomach those types of jobs anymore. Verizon paid a pitiful $12.50 an hour back in 2005, I imagine it hasn't risen much since then. Maybe they've improved operations, a decade is a long time and if they're growing jobs oh well.

In terms of jobs quality, just be careful with the hyperbole is all I'm saying. I had a higher paying job in Buffalo, NY than I ever found in Nashville and it lasted 5 years. Buffalo is considered a dead end job market, although I didn't have that feeling while living there. I obtained the job at the height of the recession.

Jobs growth is a good thing, but the hyperbole that goes along with these publications like Forbes gets a little silly at times (Nashville isn't growing the third most net new jobs in the nation out of all the GMP markets in America). I'm hoping our economy improves wages along with the number of jobs, this goes hand in hand and isn't mutually exclusive. I still can't shake that many of the new jobs in Nashvile are relatively low paying where you make $12 or $15 an hour. These are the jobs I've seen in my recent searches...