My First and Second Real Jobs cont..

This is a continuation of this post.

After graduating in 1990 with an MBA, I took a job as an installment loan collector for a small bank. You are probably wondering if the MBA was worth it, and that is a post on another day. But, at the time, being a collector was not what I had dreamed about while sitting in my Econometrics class at UTA.

However, looking back on it some 15 years later, I can say it was one of the most enjoyable jobs I ever had and one where I may have learned the most. If you are asking yourself, "how can calling and asking people for money be enjoyable?", then you have never repossessed someone's car. If that sounds cruel to you, then loan someone $15,000 and then have them hang up on you, avoid your calls, lie to you and break promise after promise to pay, then you will understand the joy of repossessing a car. Also, I can say in most cases, when I had a car repossessed it was the best thing that could happen to those people because I was removing a burden from their lives that they no longer had to deal with.

I also learned a lot from being a collector. First, I learned some personal lessons like how important keeping good credit is and how you never want to be in debt or over extend yourself. These were lessons that were never taught to me directly as I grew up so I was fortunate to get to see the true value of them first hand before I messed up my own life. I also learned how to deal with people diplomatically. I have used the skills I learned as a collector everyday as I manage people and also work with other groups within our organization.

While I didn't know it at the time, God placed me in that position to teach me some lessons he knew I would need during the rest of my life.