Curls N Twirls for Girls

Are these not adorable hair flowers? =)

Curls N Twirls for Girls makes these and many other styles of hair bows and super cute skirts. I happen to know the talented lady who makes these... she's been my friend for over 10 yrs. She's one of those friends who you still consider your friend even though you never see each other because of living on different sides of the country. We've kept in touch via facebook. Here's why she's terrific (besides the obvious talents in bow making...):

Picture me, 11 years ago at the tender age of 16 (oops I think I just revealed my age), tall and gawky, resembling Olive Oil in a non-cartoon form (not much has changed in the department), with braces and missionary hose* on.

* Missionary hose: a pair of nylons constructed with a left leg from a pair whose right leg is full of runs and a right leg from a pair whose left left is full of runs. The ratty side of each pair is snipped off and both panty portions are worn, thus resulted in double control top and a single right and single left leg that is (mostly) run-free. Commonly worn by poor college girls attending a college with a dress code requiring nylons.

Baptists and their nylons... I'll never understand.

Back to our story.

I was starting my second job ever, the first outside the comfort of the college premise. I was to become...

dun dun dun

a telemarketer.

Yes, I sold credit card protection plans and mortgage insurance and accidental death insurance over the phone for 4 1/2 yrs. Do you think less of me now? It's a crummy job but it's a job. I was and still am grateful that I had a way to pay my school bill and (later... not at 16) pay for my wedding. Stressful and not what I want to do ever again, but I learned a lot while annoying people during their dinner hour. People skills, boldness, persistence, resilience, and 100 ways to eat a peanut butter and jelly sand which (I personally think popping a few Doritos in one makes a nice variation). Every job will teach a person character, but a job telemarketing teaches you Character with a capital C! ☺Truth be told, the ruder/grosser/more bizarre potential customers were on the phone the better. I loved having a good story to tell at the end of a shift. Not that I encouraged it... no, I'd rather have a sweet person on the other end of the line who was just dying to buy whatever I was selling. But when the person I was calling was less than nice (or uh... appropriate), it really didn't rattle me. What did rattle me: mean supervisors. A few of them made me cry. Of course I was sleep deprived (as were we all), homesick youngin' so maybe it didn't take too much.

But on that day, my first day, I was scared and didn't know what I was doing. As is the case with companies based on sales, the pressure to have big sales numbers was of course high, especially for the supervisors. And usually the supervisors would pass that pressure along to the sales floor. So there I was, wide eyed and unsure of what in the world I was doing. I'd never even had a credit card so the idea of getting others to accept one or "protect" the one they already had was more than a little daunting. And then I was introduced to my supervisor (aka. the master mind behind Curls N Twirls). And she was nice. And she put no pressure on me. She was nice. So I relaxed. Because she was nice.

Niceness goes a long way, don't you think?

And as it turned out, I was pretty good at selling things that I was, in actuality, clueless about. So I made sales. And my supervisor continued to be nice to me. And on the days when I couldn't get a sale to save my life, she was still nice to me. When I was sick, she told me to go home. Sometimes, when young people are given positions of authority, it goes straight to their head, ya know. But this wasn't at all the case with my first supervisor. She was respectful to us lowly underlings. =) As time went on, I had different supervisors. Some of them... well, the lofty achievement of supervisor at the telemarketing firm was more power than they could handle. ;) And eventually, I became a supervisor myself. And any time a scared newbie came over to my desk for training, I remembered my first sup. And I tried to be nice. Niceness goes a very very long way.

So, children, the moral of today's post is:

1. Be nice. People will remember it.

2. Don't be rude to telemarketers. They are so used to it, nothing you say will daunt them (in fact they may be bragging out ruining your day after you end your rant and hang up). The nicer you are, the more likely they will actually put you on the "Do not call" list, instead of assuring you that they will but "accidentally" forget to. (Not saying I ever did these things... but in 4 1/2 yr.s you see things... terrible things. ☺)

3. If you are in the market for cute hair flowers, check out Curls N Twirls For Girls facebook page. You can customize your flowers' color, size, etc.

4. Three month olds do not look at a camera on demand, no matter how much you beg.

Love,