Last year, I started taking a real interest in nutrition and holistic health. At the time, I was a vegetarian, obsessed with recycling, and I needed a flexible part-time job. So when I saw a nutrition-related job posting at $22.50 per hour, I was immediately interested. It sounded like a perfect fit for me because you built your own work schedule and the pay was definitely attractive. It meant I didn't have to work a lot of hours to earn a decent paycheck.

I applied and went through the interview process. I was so excited to land the job. The company provided almost everything I needed to run samples, such as the plates and marketing materials. I had to order the folding table off Amazon and provide my own knife and cutting board, but the company shipped me boxes of the protein bars they wanted me to sample.

Each month, I had to schedule out my sampling shifts on the online system, called Pruvi. I was supposed to do two three-hour shifts at each store in my territory. The easiest way to plan out my monthly schedule was to work back-to-back shifts on Saturdays and Sundays and fill in the blanks on evenings during the week. I liked the flexibility aspect and building my own schedule, but sometimes fulfilling the requirements were difficult if I had other things going on.

Once I got to each store, I had to sign in and pick up a name tag. Usually, the grocery manager would tell me where I was allowed to set up my table. I had to arrive at the store early enough to give me time to set up. I also had to go to the shelves and collect all the boxes the store had in stock and count up the stock before and after my shift. I kept a notebook with me to record the data for each shift, and I was also required to take pictures of my display. At the end of each day, I had to upload the data and pictures for each shift as documentation.

We all love free samples, but it's kind of weird being on the other side of the table. A lot of people made weird comments about the nutritional value of the protein bars, such as telling me they weren't interested because the sugar content was too high. Some people would spend a lot of time at the table talking to me but then walk away without purchasing, leaving me to think they just wanted to talk to someone.

I didn't expect this job to be as sales-orientated as it was. I was required to sell a certain number of protein bars at each shift. I am not a sales-minded person at all, so this was extremely challenging for me and is a huge reason I eventually no longer worked this job. I did it for three months and then quit because meeting the sales goals was too high.

One regret I have about this job was that it was contract-based, meaning taxes were not charged on my monthly paychecks. While this was great at the moment, it meant I owed a lot of tax money the following year. It's also kind of weird when I go to the same grocery stores now, and I remember the hours I spent standing in the stores, trying to convince people to buy the product.

If you love talking to people and enjoy sales, this is definitely a good part-time job to try out. It's flexible and you could earn bonuses if you sold enough bars. But if sales aren't your thing, this is way more challenging than it seems.