Tag Archives: telemarketing

Shit Jobs: Telemarketing

6 Jun
Telemarketing

image stolen from j.p. sims consulting

You’re sitting there in a tiny cubicle in a moldy beige room with acoustical tile and you are separated from a bear sized homeless man with a loud booming voice by what is basically urinal divider. You have a headset on, an old one with one foam earphone and a curly wire going into a battered phone. You are listening to a cavernous hiss. And then it beeps and your back tenses and it’s showtime.

“…. Hello? HELLO!!???!!!”

The person on the other end of the line has been listening to silence and clicks for five seconds. They are tipped off to what you are. Because the autodialer waits for what it thinks is a human voice to connect you. The person is already pissed off. You have a dumb terminal in front of you. It’s the 21st century but you have a monitor with green block letters on black from the 70’s with what is putatively the person’s name and address, but a lot of times it’s empty or some guy who was about to get fired had put in “Harry Stiffey, 69 Cumshot Drive.” Continue reading

Work Diaries, Part Two

2 Dec

main-rotating-images-telemarketer

September 2012

Anyway, I’m feeling pretty god damn motherfucking good at work today, except for, you know, I fucked some little things up.  Who cares.  I hate that menial part of my job, I hate it I hate it I hate it- it’s over.  It’s over.  God damn, it’s fucking over, thank you Jesus.  Thank you Lord.

Now all I gotta do is figure out how to get some god damn motherfucking money.  Cobble a living together.  Cover scripts for money.  Get some bullshit job.  Work for (REDACTED), doing some real estate scam.  Something.

I will make it.  It will be OK.  I came to California with no money.  Or, my grandmother had given me a $500 savings bond and I used it to buy a bicycle, a mattress, and pay the rent on a room.  I got a job out of the newspaper the next day.  Cold calling places.  The job was telemarketing.  I was good at it, but it killed me.  Jobs kill me.  I wasn’t built to work. Continue reading