The
Fundraiser
Back in
High School…yes, my dreary ass high school days, I was apart of the Rotary
Club. Don’t laugh, it was highly looked
upon to be apart of the Rotary Club, or so I was told. A teacher asked me to join, I said yes, and
so I was in the Rotary Club, hell part of the pitch was that I would be out of
class...sold!
Well,
with the Rotary Club, I was the “Community Youth Representative” for the United
Way. Basically, I sat in these boring as
board meetings and tried my hardest to stay awake. Yes, picture it…the only high school student
AND the only black person in the room, and of course to me, at the time, it was
like watching paint dry. I’m sure I
should have looked like this:
But I’m
sure I looked like this:
I was all
the way wrong, they should have never had me sitting up in a board meeting
deciding on the funding for hospices’ and senior care facilities knowing good
and well I was not concerned on what their plans were.
Nevertheless,
my United Way experience in 1993 paid off as I applied for my new United Way
job of 2006. I was in the interview
frontin like, “Yes, I absolutely had involvement in the community and had input
on how funding should be allocated during the campaign year!” I
wasn’t lying; I was “involved”, technically…. I just did what you call “embellish”
my experience a bit!
So, I am
added to the Baltimore Team as a “Relationship Manager”. Yes, that was my title, Senior Relationship
Manager. The title itself was BS! But keep reading; there is more BS
ahead.
I was
apart of the Resource Development department, which was cool because why, my
department was ALL BLACK WOMEN!
HOLLLA!!!!!!!! To top it off, my
boss was a black woman and even better, was that she knew some folks in Spokane
Washington!
Pause!
Let me
tell you a little something about us Spokane folks, it don’t matter if you’re
white, black, young, old…if you meet someone randomly and they just so happen
to know about Spokane Washington…we’re immediately excited and go into a line
of questions “really, who do you know?, what school did they go to? Did they
live on the East Side, South Hill, Northside or the Valley? OMG you’ve eaten at
Zips? Did you have tartar with your
fries tho?” A nigga be hyped!
Okay,
another lesson on Spokane…there is a restaurant called Zips and hands down have
THE BEST FRENCH FRIES EVER!
I never
cared for McDonald’s fries until I moved out of Spokane. Eating McDonald’s fries is like taking coffee
in the desert, if that’s all there is, hell, I guess I gotta take it. But when I go home, oh please believe Zips is a must! And yes, we dip our fries
in tartar sauce.
Yes, Xzibit, we dip our fries in tartar sauce. I don’t know, we just do, it’s what we do,
and the shit is good! Don’t knock it until you try it. OMG, I want a Papa Joe so bad right now!
Moving
on!
So, now
having a sista for a boss, you know I was in there off the LaVita Alize
Jenkins, "Heyyyy, boss lady, just let me know what you need, I got you!”
She was
cool as a fan! I cannot express how much
I loved my boss…no homo. For real, you
have to think about it, go back through my old Job Chronicles, I’ve never been
on a team where I was working for a Black Woman, therefore I was set and ready
to learn and follow her lead. And she
was a Virgo too…. shout out to my Virgo’s!!!!!
Well, my duties
as a relationship manager were to be the campaign manager for large companies
and organizations. My portfolio
consisted of Johns Hopkins Hospital and University (the 3rd largest
account United Way had—thank you very much), The Baltimore Sun, and all retail
in MD (Wal Mart, Target, Nordstrom, JCPenny, Macy’s, Giant Food, etc). So my portfolio of accounts was very vast,
but you know me, I hit the ground running!
The
workplace campaigns were basically set up for you, the employee to donate to
the charity of your choice through a deduction from your payroll. Basically it is a Righteous Hustle. Why do I call it a Righteous Hustle?
Because it’s like me saying:
“Check
this out homeboy, give me $50 each pay check, I’m gonna take $10 of your $50
for my pockets, its my fee, and then I will put the rest of it in the collection plate at
church on Sunday and sign your name. I'll say Amen too!
Cool? Cool.”
I bet you all just read that in Hustle Man's voice too huh? lol
So, therefore the Righteous Hustle.
We would
give the money to the other charities, but United Way go their bread too, I
mean we the employees needed to get paid; we had to function as an
organization…but multiply that by thousands of donors from all workplaces
around the sate of Maryland. Now don’t
trip, we did have some fools who weren’t so quick to fall for the banana in the
tailpipe. So, they would send me in my
cute DKNY Business Suit, polished speech and I would explain in my “corporate”
way in which it all worked. I was getting that money!
My job is
going fantastic, my boo is loving on me…things are going great! Until, I started having financial
issues. See, what had happened was, when
I working at the Marriott, I was too cheap to pay for parking, and too lazy to
catch the train to my job that was 5 minutes from my house, so I would park on
the street, and over the year, I racked up parking tickets for expired
meters.
Yeah, well I had about $700 in
fines. DO NOT JUDGE ME, NO DON’T DO
THAT! Anyways, so my boo at the time
decided he wanted to get in the liquor business and started working for Jack
Daniels. Bingo, because now, I can be a
promo girl! Who better than to help out
on his job than someone who already had the experience, right?
Good in theory, but there were issues with
that…you’ll have to read bits of that when my book comes out! Yes, its coming…don’t rush me!!! The book is loosely based on events that transpired during this time. If you like these blogs, you'll love the book. Shameless plug!
Anyways,
so the United Way money and the new promo money still wasn’t enough to chip at
the iceberg of parking tickets. So, what
do I do? I decided to go back to the
Marriott. This time, as a night auditor
at the SpringHill Suites Marriott at Arundel Mills.
So check this out, that
meant from 8am-4pm I worked United Way.
4-6pm chill. 6-8pm Jack Daniels
Promo. Go home, get ready for work at
Marriott from 10pm – 7am…then do that over and over. Yes, that was the true definition of
INSANITY. Talk about a sleep deprived
angry black woman?!?!?!
Talk
about life coming full circle, because here I was again, sleep at my desk…at
UNITED WAY!!!!
NEXT: UNITED WAY PART 2: Making life long friends
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