Danielle’s Notes: More on Travels

Today I was talking to the boss’s wife (who is also my coworker) about my travels around doing retail data collection. It’s because I told her about one of the apps), and she’s been doing it now herself and loves it. Even her husband, our boss, did a couple of the jobs on there.

I told her about the time I went to Arkansas in July of 2020. I saw that the Coca-Cola jobs were paying amazing, but I was afraid to go. I did jobs all the way to Texarkana, stayed in Texarkana for about half a day, did everything there, then said ok- I’m going to Arkansas. I’m not sure why I was scared. Maybe because of the pandemic, I’m not sure.

I spend nine days in Arkansas, doing these high paying jobs starting in the southwest corner of the state and moving all the way through up to the northeast corner of the state. The jobs were very high paying, and I made a killing. I slept in my car at truck stops mostly, but did check into motels three separate times.

People in these very small Arkansas towns often gave me the side eye as if they could tell I wasn’t from around there. A lot of the towns seemed to only have residents who were very fair skinned and blonde. I’m of Greek ancestry and have dark complexion and dark brown hair, so I wondered if they were giving me weird looks for racial reasons. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, though, so hopefully I was wrong. I do remember going to a convenience store and asking the clerk if he sold socks. Not sure how I ended up without socks, but it was driving me nuts. This store owner was of Indian ancestry and had a thick accent. I wondered how on earth he ended up in that particular town, especially since these people seemed to look at outsiders funny. Usually when anyone immigrates to a new country, they go to larger metropolitan areas. He said he didn’t carry socks but that now since I asked for them, he’d get them for the store. He told me “next time” when I came back, there would be socks for sale. I really tried to tell him no, seriously that’s ok- I’m not coming back. I think of him often. If he did get socks to sell in the store because of me, I sure hope he sold them.

I also remember rural Arkansas having a TON of mosquitoes- I called it mosquito Armageddon.

In the 9th day, I ended my excursion right over the state line at a Walmart in southern Missouri. I called my mother. She sounded annoyed as she said, “Where are you?!?!”

I said, “Missouri…”

She responded, “Missouri City?”

I cringed. Missouri City is a suburb of Houston. I paused and said, “No… No. I’m- in the state. Of Missouri.”

One thing my mom always got on my case for was getting carried away with these audit jobs and doing the next one and the next one and the next one until I was super far away and faced with a long drive home. She would tell me, “Just do the furthest one away and work your way back home.” I would try to do that, but then they’d give me offers I couldn’t refuse for the opposite direction. And I have ADHD.

I spent the next day driving back into Houston so I could spend the weekend with my daughter. My boss’s wife enjoyed hearing my Arkansas story.

There was a second time I went through Arkansas. It was when I needed to renew my drivers license and the state of Texas decided they needed my birth certificate. That was aggravating. I was like, I exist. I promise. My mother didn’t know where it was, and neither did I. I was born in Chicago, so I tried to apply for a replacement with the state of Illinois vital statistics. They said it would take 12 weeks to send me one. I asked what if I applied in person? They said it would take 7 days if I applied in person. So I literally drove to a vital statistics office in southern Illinois and did the jobs all the way there and back. I didn’t make as much of a killing as I did in the summer of 2020, but at least I got my birth certificate in time and made a nice profit.

Here are some more pictures I found from all my wanderings. The sunflowers are in a field in west Texas.