The Wilderness, part1 - Office Depot

After leaving my first youth pastorate I went to work for Office Depot and was highly successful selling computer for them for over three years. I had an awful boss at the Depot. He definitely did not have any real strengths needed to manage people. He was just a bully. He had started out in the grocery business and since he had a college degree, all he had to do was stick around long enough and eventually they would put him on a management track. From there he could always produce results for about five years, just about anywhere before those in authority over him caught on that what they saw was all they were ever going to get. All he had to do was just keep moving ahead of that curve and he could keep them fooled. That eventually led him to mice from grocery to big box/ office supply retail. He never gave a compliment and was constantly tearing the people under him down.

I was determined that, even though this was not a ministry position, I was going to give this job my all for the Glory of God the same as if it was. I went above and beyond my duties and responsibilities, even though my boss repeatedly falsely accused me of slacking off and not doing my job. I went the extra mile for my customers. My approach was never about making a sell. It was always about learning the customers real needs, educating them along the way and matching them up with the choice that best met their needs, even if it honestly meant sending them to one of my competitors to achieve that end. And, always, I took care of the little guys in the store I had to depend on to get my job done. Yes, it was true they were already getting paid to be there to facilitate me, but they were getting no appreciation for the job they were doing from the boss and I have learned when working in sales jobs, you always want to take care of the people who you are dependent on to deliver your product to the customer once you have consummated the sale. You have to remember that no sale is ever truly complete until the customer has gotten home with their purchase, has put it to use, and is still as excited about it and buying it from you as they were at the time they handed over their cash or signed the credit contract. Those individuals that expedite delivery and make sure that it is loaded up or delivered undamaged and in a timely manner are almost as important a part of the process as was the salesman. I wanted those people to be excited to be helping one of my customers because they knew I was going to take care of them later.

This was one of the big reasons why I sold about two million dollars in sales the last year I was at Office Depot and was not far behind that the other years I was there. Yet, I never heard once from my boss that I was doing that great of a job. He was getting accolades for the job I was doing and I am sure he thought it was because of how effective a job of bullying me that I was doing so well. I doubt he could have had the capacity to believe the truth, that I was doing my job to the glory of God and treating his employees to the exact antithesis of him. It wasn't until I was at a quarterly sales seminar for the company and we were talking about things with our collective bosses' boss and he reacted to some comment I made with shock that I felt so insecure in my job. He assured me that if my boss were to fire me for anything short of being able to have me arrested for, he would probably get fired and I would get my job back. I was shocked to find out that I was consistently the number one salesman for the entire chain, worldwide, and on my slack months I might slip to number three, never had I been lower than number five. I was definitely king of my peers at that meeting and my view of my boss changed forever that day.

Office Depot was the one exception to the rut rule. I stuck it out here through thick and thin, good and bad, pretty and ugly. There was no running back to comfortable from there. I remained at Office Depot until I had started an online mail-order business that was making more money and demanding more time than the Depot afforded.

But, there was two things that happened during my tenure in the office supply wasteland. The first was that I had the opportunity to positively impact many of my coworkers lives for Jesus Christ. The second was that my wife and I came face-to-face with the ugly sting of infertility and the reality that our dream of being parents may not ever come true. I turned thirty while working at Office Depot and probably could have had a large party with work friends and church friends, but I just didn't feel like celebrating anything. I had reached the first major milestone in my life and I judged my life an utter failure. This deep feeling of failure had nothing to do with the big occupational or achievement dreams that still seemed to evade my grasp, it had everything to do with the fatherhood element that looked like it had turned to ash in my hands and would like never have a Phoenix like miraculous rising in the future. I wanted four children and expected to have some, most or all of them by now and all I had were broken dreams.

I really began to feel like every aspect of my life, not just the pursuit of purpose and ministry was wandering aimlessly in the wilderness.


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Location:Carver Dr,Roswell,United States