Before He Made It Big (& Before Getting Fired): Eric Church

Sometimes we forget that just because country stars are famous they still used to live the 9 to 5 life just like you and I. They had to make money some how while struggling to make it big. Even Eric Church had a real job before drinking beers and playing music for a living. Well, before he got fired at least.

When the 'Drink in My Hand' singer first arrived in Nashville, he found work being a phone operator for a Home Shopping Network. You know you find yourself watching shopping network channels real late at night (or technically, early in the morning)? That was Church taking credit card numbers from the crazy shoppers on the tough midnight to 8:00 AM shift. Though, his stint there wasn't a long lasting career when he was fired for trying to talk drunk callers out of exactly what they'd call to buy. I mean he was trying just to be a good friend, right?

I sold knives from midnight to 7 or 8 AM,” he said. “And, anytime somebody calls you at 3 or 4 AM and needs 200 knives for $19.95, it’s automatically an alarming situation. And I was young and I’d been in a lot of these people’s shoes, I had done this. I knew they were drunk. I knew what they had done. They’d just come home from the bar, flipped on Shop at Home and said, ‘You know what? I need that.’ So the reason the job didn’t last long for me is that I was maybe the worst salesmen in history because I ended up talking a lot of these people out of it.”

Bahaha could you imagine being Church's boss listening to that conversation?