It was 7.45 a.m. on the 12th of August 1968, dressed in a brand new suit and carefully knotted tie, carrying an almost empty new briefcase, when I nervously said goodbye to my parents, who wished me luck before I walked for 15 minutes to Airdrie train station. After a 30-minute ride to Queen Street station in the center of Glasgow, I walked for another 10 minutes before entering a third-floor office suite. The office belonged to a small 4-partner Chartered Accountancy firm who had offered me a job after I had somehow impressed one of the four partners when he had interviewed me 4 weeks previously.
During the 4 weeks between the interview and the 12th of August, while playing a lot of golf on my own, I had imagined what awaited me after I started work. As it turned out, what I had thought would be the case, couldn’t have been further from the reality.
I had imagined that I’d be working in the same office every day, with the same people around me, teaching me by showing me what to do while we all got to know each other and, over time, like each other. Instead, I was given a piece of paper with the address of the building site where a new road bridge across the River Clyde was being built. I was given the paper by the partner who had interviewed me a month earlier and was told to go to the site office and ask for John, the Auditor.
“He should be there with Jean the comptometerist, they are expecting you”, the partner said. “You’ll be helping John with the audit for the next two weeks until your 2-week initial bookkeeping course starts. at the end of August”. “Take this with you”, the partner continued as he dragged a large square case towards me. “Jean needs it to do her job”.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s a comptometer”, he replied. “An adding machine”.
I lifted it and groaned silently inside. It must have weighed over 10 pounds.
It took me half an hour to stagger the half mile to the building site, frequently changing the hand carrying the light briefcase and the one carrying the heavy machine. I was sweating and my arms and shoulders were aching when I finally found the temporary office. I asked the receptionist to inform John that I had arrived and he quickly came to the front desk. Thankfully, he carried the comptometer to the audit room for me.
“Did you carry this yourself all the way from the office?” John asked.
“Yes, it nearly killed me,” I replied.
“I’ll make other arrangements to get it back again after Jean is finished here,” John assured me, before introducing me to Jean, who quickly unpacked the machine and got straight to work checking the addition of columns of figures. Her fingers flew over the huge number of keys with remarkable speed with her eyes only trained on the paperwork she was checking. She only looked at the comtometer when she needed to check her total with the ones on the paperwork.
The rest of the morning was taken up by John introducing me to the company’s account staff, and an embarrassing incident with a coffee machine.
Jean had brought her own sandwiches for lunch and John disappeared for an hour to meet a friend. I wandered outside and found a little shop where I bought a ham sandwich and a bottle of orange juice which I consumed in a park overlooking the Clyde.
That afternoon was very boring. It consisted of John shouting out check numbers and amounts to me which I had to find in a file of bank statements which often meant looking through several pages before I found the correct entry. After I had found the correct entry, I marked it with an upside-down green tick and told John the date that the check had been presented to the bank. I had no idea why I was doing this seemingly meaningless task. When we stopped for coffee John told me that I would understand more after I had attended the bookkeeping course that I was to attend in a couple of weeks. “In the meantime, please don’t hesitate to ask me any questions you may have about why we are doing what we are doing”, he said. “The work may get a little more interesting if you have some idea of the point of it all”.
It seemed to take ages for the clock on the wall to tick around to 5 o’clock. John told me to come back to the building site’s office the following morning at 9 and not go to the office in the center of Glasgow. I left the building site realizing that I was probably nearer the station after Queen Street and I headed in that general direction. I asked a stranger in the street for directions and I soon found the next station down the line from Queen Street. I got on the next train and headed back to Airdrie.
During the train journey and my walk home from the station in Airdrie, my thoughts were ones of deep disappointment. I had not enjoyed the day starting from the time I had to carry the heavy machine over half a mile. I had no idea why I was making green ticks on bank statements. The whole thing just seemed so pointless. I couldn’t have been more disappointed with the first day. I just felt like quitting.
However, as I walked up the hill towards our house I thought of the positive things I could take from the day. I remembered how friendly both John and Jean had been to me and how Jean had helped me to carry a soft plastic cup of boiling coffee back to the office after I had explained I could not do so with my wobbly hands
That evening, after telling Mom and Dad about the day, I realized that, despite how disappointing the day had been, I had to give it at least a year before I changed the whole direction of my life. I was not going to give up after one day, no matter how hard I had found it to be. The following year, the second year of my course, was due to be spent full-time at Glasgow University, and on that first evening I promised myself that, no matter how difficult the first year was going to be, I would stick at it at least until I was due to go to university.
So, what have my experiences of this day over 50 years ago, got to do with Affiliate Marketing in the 2020s? Simply put, it shows that I very nearly fell into “The Shiny Object Syndrome Trap”. I considered my first day at work, a day I had been preparing to experience for three years at least, had been a complete disaster. I nearly did not go back to the building site the next day. Instead, I very nearly went back to the main office to resign.
Have you ever bought a product or course, tried it for a day, and discarded it because it did not immediately appeal to you? If your answer is “Yes”, do you think you unwrapped it fully to let its full potential shine through?
That’s what I nearly did after my first day at work. Thank goodness I resisted the temptation. I thought that my first day at work would be exciting. Instead, it was difficult and boring. I didn’t fully understand what I was doing, but I decided not to give up and to stick to it for at least a year.
This is what every budding affiliate marketer must do. Find something and stick to it. As I have explained in previous blog posts, I had spent many years at school, working up to that first day at work, and I wasn’t going to throw it all away based on a disappointing first day.
Laying in bed that night, after I had nicked a can of Dad’s beer from the fridge, I remembered how helpful John had been, and I was sure he would continue to be helpful. I made a mental note to ask him more questions during the rest of the fortnight that followed. Then I realized that I would be working with more seniors in the future, who, hopefully, would be just as helpful. Then there would be the lecturer at my upcoming bookkeeping course, and the lecturers at the Friday evening and Saturday morning classes that would start next month. “Look at all the mentors I’ll have”, I thought to myself. “They’re the ones that will get me through this”. I finally dozed off and had a deep night’s sleep and awoke the next morning almost eager to get on the train to the stop after Queen Street.
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Cheers
Phil