JOBS: IDT Was The Job

INTRO
I did not move to Israel for a job. I had a career in America. I moved to get away from all that. All that need money to pay for stuff way of life. I moved to Israel to live a life of moral excellence and connection with Gd. I am broke.
There are jobs that require professional aptitude and abilities and even degrees. Nobody moves to Israel for those jobs. If you get those jobs once you moved to Israel, go back to America. They pay more. If you get that job in America, then you can move to Israel.

Jobs seem to be starting to come to Israel. I am happy to say, I don’t know where to find them. I am not a heretic. Maybe they are in what is known as the Merkaz. I think that means the middle of the country, or anyplace they care enough about that they don't want it bombed. I am sure the jobs are not in Jerusalem. I do think that Jerusalem is the Merkaz. Maybe I am wrong. There are no real jobs I can find here, so I guess I am wrong.
I don’t know what job I could do. Now, I am a comedian, running a club- Off The Wall Comedy Basement- corner of Ben Yehuda and King George in downtown Jerusalem, where I perform every week as an integral part of everybody’s Israel experience. You can come and see me perform, if you want to laugh and understand the details of Israeli society. That was a plug. As a comedian, I don't think I could do anything else with my life. Once you really commit to comedy, anything else just seems unfulfilling. Honestly, who really cares about youth at risk? I mean that. They are annoying. I am more worried about myself at risk around youth.
If I was in the regular job market, I would be stuck as a new immigrant, opening up bathrooms and charging a shekel. That is about all the ability I have as a new immigrant. Yeah, I might have a degree or two, but translate that to Hebrew and I am kindergarten.
I could always work in hi-tech. I could also learn about computers. But do you see me jumping at that. I have learned how to use Freemovies.Idon'tliveinAmeric.Ineverhavetopayforenterainmentagain.co.il. That is enough hi-tech for me. If I learn more hi-tech, I might as well move back to America. The closest thing I am going to touch which is hi-tech, is one of the new touch phones. And that is only because I can stream movies on it.

IDT Would Have Been Perfect for Me
I thought I could work at a call center. I felt that working a call center would fulfill my needs as an immigrant for lack of work gratification. Working a service center could give me that sense of non-accomplishment I was looking for as an immigrant.
Once you immigrate to a new country, you generally qualify as a person who's English is poor enough to work at a service center for any American company, working for customers in the US. At least I thought.
I think I was the first person to be rejected from IDT. That was 10 years ago. And now, I am the only immigrant in Israel to have never worked at a call center, or have done security.
IDT was the big call center in Israel. I missed out on the opportunity to be a real immigrant.

I don’t know much about the business. I think that being in a call center was not for me. I was new to Aliyah and I still spoke English as a first language, still not pronouncing the silent letters; that is not good for a service center. That did not throw off the customers enough to make them feel like they were supporting the Far East.
A service center needs somebody to stall the people on the other side of the phone, to get them more angry. They are supposed to call angry, and then be stalled to get more angry, and then they get to a point of anger where they are willing to kill themselves. That is when the manager can get on the phone to keep them alive and on the plan. After speaking to anybody from the Far East long enough, in English, you want to say 'yes' to anything with an American accent.
I thought they were giving all immigrants jobs. I was wrong. They were only giving jobs to people that weren't working in a profession. I was supposed to work a counseling hotline, because I have a social work degree. However, they realized that the only way to keep people on the phone long enough was to make sure that the person they were speaking to did not have a background in counseling. This way, the customer would stay on the hotline longer, trying to figure out why a counseling hotline had people who new nothing about help. The customers did realize that they did need help, and that is a start, worth paying $1.99 a minute.
I am not going to conjecture why IDT went down. Everybody, at the end of the big IDT Israel stint seemed to have been family. I mean real family. Not 'We are all Olim' family. I mean not skilled members of the family. I was meeting people from IDT with their job backgrounds. One guy explained to me the different positions, ‘Brother…in law….I am sister to…I am uncle emeritus.’ That is a legitimate job in Israel. Uncle emeritus is an important position. That is a position which needs to be filled by somebody who is willing to relax on shift. Most people who are not family cannot be depended upon to commit to not overly work themselves.

I never worked at a call center. And I blame that on the fact that have no relatives in the Merkaz.
Who knows? It might be because my English is good like this.