So, I lost my job after only 2 shifts. I’m usually pretty good with jobs, my bosses have always been happy with me, and one even went out of their way to find another job for me even when they didn’t need me any more. So it was a bit of a shock to be told not to come back again after only 2 shifts.
To be honest, I was thinking that I’d start looking for something else already after just half an hour today. I knew I wouldn’t be able to put up with the job for long, but I figured I could at least bear it for a while until I found something else. But, yesterday was not my day.
I won’t miss the job, that’s for sure. I am pretty worried now about finding another. I spent most of last year looking for a job near college, I couldn’t find much. I had 2 interviews, which I thought went well until they asked about my availability, and I told them that I wouldn’t be around in the holidays. In hindsight, I should have just lied then quit when it came to the holidays.
This job as one of those jobs I swore I’d never do though. Telemarketing, outbound calls, being an annoying person who no one wants to talk to. Getting paid for being annoying doesn’t sound too bad, until you realise you have to be good at it. I, unfortunately (or fortunately maybe) am not.
A quick outline of what I had to do. I’d go through a big list of phone numbers, calling people and trying to ask them a few questions. Usually it’d go like this -
“Good evening, is this Mr/Mrs ___? Hi, I’m calling from Midas, we’re carrying out a brief holiday survey”
“Not interested”
“I’m not trying to sell anything”
*Hang up*
Of course, the bit about not trying to sell anything was a bit of a lie. In these surveys, when you eventually got someone willing to answer them, we’d ask them a bit about how often they take holidays and where they like to go, while quickly moving onto some totally unrelated and somewhat too personal questions about their marital status and income. This was just so a precursor for a second call though. If they were married, earned enough money, and liked taking holidays, someone would call them back a week later and try to sell them a holiday.
I did alright on my first day. The people who were good at it would get 20 or so successful answers out of their lists in a shift. I managed 7, which wasn’t too bad considering I spent the first hour training and filling out forms, and I was new too it.
I’m not too sure what went wrong yesterday though. It might have been bad luck with the numbers I had, not many people answered, and most of those who did were too old (one of the requirements was that they be between 25 and 65). But still, when people did answer I rarely got them to actually answer the questions. I tried various ways of wording it, and it just didn’t work out.
My boss, team leader, or whatever they called themselves, spent most of the evening listening in on new people’s phone calls and giving them some advice. For me though, they were just condescending and insulting, telling me that my results so far were pathetic but offering me little advice on how I should improve. All she did say was that I needed to sound more cheerful and like I “wanted to be there”. Well, I didn’t want to be there. Ironically, I was actually pretty cheerful at the start of the shift, since I’d been having a pretty good week up until that point. But then it was a downward spiral from there, unsuccessful calls and an insulting boss did not do much to cheer me up.
Honestly, I have no idea how the people who work there can keep up their cheerful fascades for 4 hours. There was one girl who’s calls I listened in on during training last week. I actually had to hold the phone away from my ear, her voice was so annoying. I can imagine that the people on the other end of the line just wanted to answer the questions just to get her to stop talking. Some people just have a knack for stopping them from hanging up, and manage to persuade half the people to stay on the line. I’m too nice to them though. I just go “Oh ok, sorry for wasting your time, good bye”
So in the end yesterday, I got 4 successful calls compared to the target of 20. I tried to ask for one more chance in the hope I’d be a bit better after some more sleep, but that didn’t work. They just said it’d be a waste of their time if I came back.
I really do need the money though. There’s the website stuff I’m going to do too, but I don’t know if that’s enough to save up for stuff I want. Well, back to looking for jobs I guess.
