My nephew did a 9 month internship for a large insurance company during his senior year of college. After he graduated the company offered him a full-time position with benefits.
He turned it down because he felt $42K a year was beneath him for his amount of education. I don’t think 42 grand is bad for a 21 year old in this part of the country and in this economy.
That was last May. Since then he’s worked part-time at a dry cleaners, lives with his parents, and whines that he doesn’t get any hits on his resume. Had he taken that job and still lived with his parents he already could have a good start on a decent nest egg. I can’t help but imagine that at board meetings at that company his name comes up and they laugh hysterically.
Internship-entry level job-eventual promotion. Isn’t that the way it works for many college grads? or am I out of touch?
My parents never bought me a car, they didn’t even want to or refused to drive me to job interviews or jobs, my dad told me when I said I needed a car to work that “Mexicans come to this country every single day with not even a dime in their pocket and they get jobs”.
My nephew had a car purchased for him outright by his parents, he flat refused to drive it saying it was beneath him and he wanted a specific much more expensive car. This became a big issue, until his mom sold it and bought him the car he wanted.
What is my point? Some people are spoiled and egotistical as shit.
My math says that works out to about $20.00 an hour, and he would get benefits. The company obviously likes him/his work, so it’s not unreasonable to predict a promotion or 2 in the next 4 or 5 years, possibly sooner. For someone starting out, that seems stable and secure, and a pretty good springboard for the future. I’m in my mid-50s, and it took me decades to get to the place that he turned up his nose at. So, I went with ‘dumb decision.’ Is it too late to mend fences with the company?
What’s his major? What sort of jobs is he looking for? If the insurance industry job is far from his goal, it might not have been as stupid a thing to do.
Marketing, which is the kind of job they offered him.
So you think making $240 a week pre-tax for the last 5 months rather than over 800/week + benefits was a bright idea?
You should hear him piss and moan about not getting any call backs on any of the jobs he’s gone after. Oh, and how he can’t do anything because he’s broke. :rolleyes:
I know lawyers that would jump at $42k+bennies right after passing the bar. This kid made a stupid decision, and apparently has an overly inflated notion of his worth.
Did I say that? I was thinking that if they offered him good money to, say, sell photocopiers, but his major and interest was in civil engineering, he might be right to turn down the job. But if he majored in marketing and the job was in marketing, then it might be a stupid thing to do. On the other hand, perhaps his interest was in consumer goods marketing, and not insurance marketing.
I turned down a lot of stuff when I was younger. I’m not an example of how one should live their life, but it’s not as if I would have ended up any better had I taken better jobs out of college - life just isn’t that simple.
Did he tell you that or did you assume it? $42k for a bachelors (I’m also assuming) degree entry level in a non-stupid cost of living area is pretty reasonable. If he would have taken a $60k salary for the same offer, he may be a dope. However, he may have other reasons for not taking that job that he doesn’t want to share with you.
The fact that he’s taken a job at a dry cleaning shop indicates that he doesn’t feel that there are jobs beneath him, just that he didn’t want to take that job.
I’m in sales. Many people consider sales a revolting job and wouldn’t consider it. I don’t sell insurance and wouldn’t consider it. I don’t sell financial products, pharmaceuticals, furniture, automotive vehicles, household appliances or consumer electronics. I have no quarrel with ethical sales people who trade in those markets, but I would have to be very desperate before I tried any of them, because they don’t suit me nor interest me.
I think you should cut your young nephew some slack. He didn’t turn down Burger King for a dream job at Wendy’s, nor HP for a dream job at Cisco. He worked at a specific company in a specific industry for 9 months and turned down their offer after concluding that it wasn’t a good fit for him. If anything, I think that’s commendable.
If money were the only obstacle, you might have a point, but you don’t know that it is.
This is bullshit. I’ve done it. I have taken a job that I was 90% sure I would fail at. People have talents and abilities. Taking a paycheck from a company when you don’t think you can succeed (not just do the job, but do it well) is a disservice to yourself as much as the company offering you the job.
Those who know the difference do a great service by turning down the wrong job offers.
According to the OP, the nephew said the job was beneath him. That’s somebody saying “that job’s not good enough for me” not “I’m not good enough for that job.”
It’s not a bad starting salary for a marketing major. If you were a chemical engineer grad from MIT then yeah, it would be an absurd insult.
However, assuming he had 9 months with this company he might have developed a distaste for the environment and did not want to work there. Some marketing jobs and sales positions are soul destroying pits of torment regardless of what they pay.
Having said this, as one other poster indicated, the experience credit would be worth more than the salary so yes he’s a bit of a tard. How did he get the impression $ 42,000 + bennies was shitty starting pay for a 4 year degree in marketing? What in the world was he comparing it to?
I don’t know this, but my guess is that some marketing jobs and sales positions are soul destroying pits of torment regardless of what they pay. You don’t need a comparison to torture to know when you’re being tortured.
It doesn’t matter what his reasons are.
Maybe he seriously understood that he didn’t like the job, and didn’t fit that company.Or maybe he’s a self-centered jerk who thinks the world owes him a living.
Or maybe he has other reasons that he didn’t want to tell his family.
So he decided he wanted to leave and find something better.
But all of this is totally irrelevant.
He is a dope for another, very simple, reason: It is always better to look for a job while you already have one.
This is a basic rule of job hunting, and anybody who ignores it is a dope.
Even if it is “beneath him”, or even if he hates the boss, or even if he wants to work in a different industry–he should have accepted the job offer, and then kept looking for something better.
His resume won’t look any better by adding “quit a successful internship at XYZ corporation to work part-time at a dry cleaner”.
It could be a matter of grandiose expectations. It could also be a matter of deciding, after nine months inside a company, that the entirety of the job and corporate culture he was being offered did not suit him.
If the former is true, he might be a spoiled bitch. If the latter is true, he could be a very self aware young man who has a safety net and values quality of life over an immediate paycheck.
I don’t know if he has a job at a dry cleaner to keep his parents off his back or as a placeholder until he finds a better starting point for himself. The thing is, none of us knows.
I’ve been playing the nephew’s advocate, but I will say this. He should move his ass out of his parent’s house and should probably be given a deadline to do so.
Get enough room mates and you can live on minimum wage. I’ve done it. It does wonders to motivate a person to earn money.