My name is Stacy Ranta, and at the beginning of 2008, I was a wireless industry worker sitting pretty. I'd been working in the industry for seven years, and with my then current employer for four years.

 

I had a decent paying job working for a vendor that supplied phone tech support and customer care to several major cellular carriers. Some people were just there for the paycheck, but I actually liked the work.

 

I was the longest tenure employee in the building, in a business with an extremely high turnover rate. Why did I stay?

 

It was in tech geek heaven

 

Every day I got to talk to dozens of interesting people about interesting gadgets. I did the math once and averaged out the number of calls I took per day, multiplied by the number of days I worked a year, times the number of years. It came out to over 30,000.

 

I spoke with everyone from grandmas to network engineers about smartphones, wireless data cards, cell phones, and computers. I helped them solve their technical issues, gave them a sympathetic ear to vent their frustrations, and a shoulder to cry on when they needed it.

 

I also sold over the phone when the company wanted to push a new product or service. When they launched a new roadside assistance program, I sold more than twice as much as the entire rest of the team. Combined.

 

My supervisor told me I should be downstairs in telesales selling service, where people were paid on commission. I told her I liked the challenge of tech support.

 

The big move

 

The year before, the company had opened a new center in a different state. Before it opened, they asked employees to come over, at the same rate of pay.

Since the area where I was had a high cost of living, and I wanted to try living somewhere else for a change, I and a handful of others took the move.

I had effectively given myself a raise, and things were great.

I was making enough to buy a new car, pay down my debts, and was even starting to look into buying a house. I loved the area, I thought my job was secure. What could go wrong?

 

Then the bottom fell out

One day in February, management called us all in and told us due to the slowdown in the economy and pressure from their largest client, we were all getting cut down to the same rate of pay as new hires.

Most everyone lost about 15% of their income, but since I had transferred over and had such a long tenure, I was hit the worst. I had to take a 35% pay cut.

 

I went from putting money in the bank and thinking about buying a house to wondering how I would be able to afford my rent and car payment. The good times were officially over. Or so I thought at the time.

 

Reinventing myself

As part of my job, I had written articles for the company knowledge base, and training material for team members whenever a new or particularly thorny issue would come up.

 

A friend suggested that I look into writing online as a supplemental source of income, even before we found out about the pay cut. I had actually written several articles on phones and some personal interest subjects, while I was still working.

 

I thought about looking for work as a tech writer, but it just didn’t appeal to me. I’d always been fascinated by ads, and so marketing seemed like a natural fit. I immersed myself in the world of copywriting.