Governor's Island & Old Work Story

Downtown Boathouse has a satellite boathouse on Governor's Island.
It is teeny tiny and not nearly as nice as Pier 26.
But it is there and people show up and go kayaking.

Kedrin, Bitz and I decided to volunteer there today.
As it turns out, everyone decided to volunteer there today! It was a very nice day.  There were t-storms in the forecast but none of them happened, although it did get really humid.

I have not been to Governor's Island since maybe 2014? 2015?
It is worth going to. I want to go paint there.

I took the 5 train to Bowling Green and walked over to the ferry.

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This is 17 State Street.

I worked a crappy job that I truly believe I had divine intervention help with ** in this building 22 years ago, I think on the 32nd floor. Maybe the 33rd floor.  I can't remember for sure. 

I was right by the window and I used to watch the sunset behind the Statue of Liberty every day in the cold months.

The park is now really nice.

The ferry from South Street is free before noon.

It is an 8 minute ride.

Working the boathouse was fun and weird.
It was very hot and we were all tired at the end of the day.

I caught the ferry back to Manhattan with my boathouse friends.

Instead of taking the R train at Whitehall allllll the way home (local every single stop in Manhattan) I decided to be smart and take the 4/5 express uptown and transfer.

Just in case you are wondering, the last stop in Manhattan on the 4/5 is Bowling Green and if there are no train issues like signal problems or sick passengers or train traffic or mystery stops in the tunnel, the ride to 59th/Lexington takes exactly 12 minutes.

If I had taken the R to Lexington from Whitehall it would have taken 48 minutes.

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**17 State Street Job Were I had Divine Intervention:

To this day I cannot- just cannot- put any other reason to what happened with that job than divine intervention.

I was fresh out of Pratt. And I was so green... and I mean really clueless and dumb and young and I had emotional issues and I was really weird and ungrounded and just completely did not know anything about anything. I was literally still a child in so many ways. But I have always been good about finding work, and I had some really crappy jobs right out of college. I had rent to pay. I was on my own after college.

So I got this job through a temp agency because I didn't know how else to find a job and I needed to leave my current one, it was so bad. They placed me with a company called Shareholder Communications, which doesn't exist anymore.

The job was Proxy Solicitation, which meant cold-calling people who owned shares in mutual funds (often managed by their investment company) and getting them to submit their proxy vote for whatever was happening with the board.

Our company was hired by the mutual fund for these types of events, because if you own a mutual fund you have the right to go to shareholder meetings and vote, although mostly no one does.

We would be briefed on the particular scenario we were cold-calling about.  There was a script. We always told people how the board recommended they vote.  Usually it was in favor, there were a few times there were hostile takeover things and the board wanted to vote no.

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I knew the words "mutual fund" and knew it was an investment but that's about it.

I did not know the names of ANY of the financial institutions (except Charles Schwab) listed on sometimes weird-looking client information. (you cannot ask to speak to Dean Witter, for example, even when listed as c/o next to the client name.)

I had absolutely no clue what I was doing except reading a script and sounding like an idiot because I had no idea what the hell I was saying. As a result, people hung up on me a lot.

It's no surprise I was not doing very well at this job.

The manager even gave me a warning saying if I didn't improve my stats I would be let go.
He might as well have been talking to a blank wall.
I didn't know what the hell I was doing, let alone how to get better.

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Then something really weird happened, and to illustrate just how clueless I was, I didn't even know it was happening until someone told me several weeks later.

I didn't change anything, or understand anything any better, but I started collecting votes instead of being hung up on. To the point where they thought I was faking it and someone was listening on my line (which I did not know).

But I was for reals getting people to vote. Over and over.  
I didn't think anything of it.

But then we were in a lull between clients.  The job was calling information to see if we could get missing phone numbers for people.  I was BORED OUT OF MY MIND LITERALLY TO TEARS and i asked the manager if I could get a different assignment. I said "I'm too smart to be doing this, I'm going crazy."

He agreed with me on all points but said he couldn't move me off the dialer because "I was literally holding the whole thing up."

He and the lady who listened to my calls because they thought I was lying told me the original temp assignment was supposed to be only six weeks, and after that if they wanted to keep people there was a salary drop, but they kept me on at the higher rate!!! I HAD NO IDEA. They said they couldn't believe I was getting vote after vote after vote and they literally could not afford to lose me because no one else was getting people to vote like that.

I still didn't really know what a mutual fund was.

I DID learn not to ask for Dean Witter though.

FUN FACT: The manager's name was Scott Fanzo and he was old enough to remember local bands from back in the day, and he knew of and remembered my father's old band called Mandrake Root.