What is this I don't even
So I got this job last week, working for a company that sells telescopes. It's an admin position, and I have zero admin experience, but I like astronomy and have a couple of telescopes, so they hired me. It's about a 35% pay cut from my restaurant job, but I get to wear nice clothes and don't come home smelling like burnt garlic and get to leave every day by 6. Every other employee there (except the other admin) is a middle-aged-to-elderly man with decades of amateur astronomy experience and they don't seem to care that I'm introverted and awkward. I have learned so much about telescopes in the five days I've worked there. One day they let me take this telescope out into the parking lot to practice using an equatorial mount (my telescope has an altazimuth mount, which is much simpler to use) and polar alignment. The best way to test if you've polar aligned something is to follow a celestial body -- the scope turns around the polar axis and the object moves across the sky east-west, so you should only have to adjust one of the dials (right ascension) to keep it centered. Being the middle of the day, the only thing I had to test my alignment on was the sun, so my boss rummaged around in the store room and found me a solar filter so I could track the sun through the scope without blinding myself. I got to look at the surface of the sun! I could see sunspots! It was amazing. In August they're planning on sending me to a star party in Ontario. I've never been on a business trip before. Shit, even my successful friends don't get to travel for work.
The only problem is that I doubt it will last. I was hired because the owner of the store, which is by all accounts very successful, recently became the main Canadian dealer for a European telescope brand and he's trying to get other astronomy stores in Canada to carry it. My job is the be the 'face' of this brand, and I have my doubts that it'll be successful.
But that's okay. Even if this isn't my ticket out of the food service industry, I'll still get to learn a shit ton about astronomy, and if they have to let me go for lack of work in a couple of months, maybe they'll feel bad and give me a nice discount on a new telescope.
The only problem is that I doubt it will last. I was hired because the owner of the store, which is by all accounts very successful, recently became the main Canadian dealer for a European telescope brand and he's trying to get other astronomy stores in Canada to carry it. My job is the be the 'face' of this brand, and I have my doubts that it'll be successful.
But that's okay. Even if this isn't my ticket out of the food service industry, I'll still get to learn a shit ton about astronomy, and if they have to let me go for lack of work in a couple of months, maybe they'll feel bad and give me a nice discount on a new telescope.