Remember that blog post where I mentioned that I had FINALLY gotten a job? Well I apologise for not blogging about it sooner guys.
Let me tell you what that job was: It was Telemarketing. Yep. I had to get up at 4:50am just so I could get ready in time to catch the numerous long public transport bus/train rides into the West of the city so I could start at 7am (because we were calling people in Melbourne who are ahead of us in timezones) and call up random strangers just to have them ignore me and tell me to go away. I got paid $18 (minimum) to do this.
I got fired after 2 days.
Woops! Ok, let me explain. You see, the thing with Telemarketing is no one wants to honestly sit there and listen to you. EVER. But to keep the job you need to sell at least 0.7 sales per hour on average (they pay you extra if you manage more). The problem with this scenario (as confirmed by the fellow experienced telemarketers there) is that it was a) close to Christmas so the smart people had decided to buy things already and everyone's spending everything on other things that they know they want or know that other people want. b) the area I had started in was apparently hard to sell in and the experienced telemarketers were complaining in their lunch break how badly they were doing c) like I explained, people don't like telemarketers and so people would hang up on me even before I had even mentioned what I was selling d) NO ONE IS HOME ON A WEEKDAY AT 11 IN THE MORNING THEY ARE ALL AT WORK.
So to describe my job as accurately as I could would be "Sitting down in a room listening to the sound of a phone ring only to get endless answering machines, and on the rare occasion that someone answers they hang up a few seconds later. Repeat this process."
By rare I mean rare. We got a sheet of 56 numbers to go through and I got bored there being barely any real people answering the phones so I marked on it whenever someone actually picked up the phone. The best average I got was 11/56, though it even got down to 2/33. I got so happy whenever someone answered. I responded in this kind of shocked joy when they did, it was like "OH HELLO!" Occasionally one of these people would be an actual business themselves, and you don't market to businesses you market to individuals so that's out of the question. Most of the people just hang up after the first 2 sentences, a few would let me get to the next paragraph before telling me they weren't interested. Rarely you'd get that gem of a customer who would sit and listen to everything I had to say. The feeling of joy when you actually finish reading your script without being hung up on (some people don't even say bye, they just hang up and leave me talking...) is so awesome, so great, making it so much more annoying when they go "sorry, I just let you talk to be polite. I'm not really interested at all. Bye." To which I reply "Have a nice day." when I really want to reply "DAMNIT TO HELL! I GET FIRED IF I DON'T SELL THINGS AND THE MORE PEOPLE I CALL THE MORE LIKELY IT IS I'LL MANAGE TO SELL SOMETHING! YOU JUST WASTED SO MUCH OF MY PRECIOUS TIME! THIS IS A NUMBERS GAME NOT A JOB WHERE IF I FAIL THAT'S OK."
Well, not at the start I didn't... but by the end (two days) I was getting slightly annoyed. So yeah, you know if you get called by a telemarketer, ask them to very briefly tell you what they're selling so you know whether or not you want to listen to them or hang up. Don't waste their time, they get fired if you do...
So yeah. I sold one thing. One thing in 10 hours. That's an average of 0.1 I got a few people interested who said they'd call back after they've thought about it, but I'll never know if I got the sell because they were arranged to call back/be called back about it the day after I got fired.
I got a call and they said "we've been monitoring your progress and you're just not selling things, sorry." and I was like "so I don't have to get up really early in the morning? Awesome, have a nice day." Then walked up to people smiling going "I just got fired!"
But don't worry guys, because I got a new job!
I deliver catalogues! Yep. Instead of having to exhaust myself trying to get up at an ungodly hour to be rejected by strangers simply on the basis of my job title and not what I was saying to them, I now have to exhaust myself folding, packing and walking around for hours on end in the hot Australian summer weather to deliver catalogues to strangers and get paid way less for it! I get paid commission per magazine and it's a very small commission. Today I swear I walked for 2-3 hours sweating in the sun while pulling along tons of catalogues and I'm half done... I feel sunburnt (I probably am, I put on sunscreen but I think I was out for so long it wore off and I'm sensitive to UV light with my redheadedness), my legs don't want to move any more.
I am going to get paid $26 for this.
AREN'T YOU GLAD YOUR JOB IS WORTHWHILE?
Or at the very least better paying.
I need a new job. My jobs are just getting worse and worse and now they don't even pay worthwhile...
