Of Students and Rejections

Saturday night I went to a gathering with a few students, drank vodka, ate dumplings and didn't get home 'til near sunrise. The latter is a bit of a blur but I do remember having a laugh and hanging over on the following Sunday, so it must have been good. It's been a while since I've been in a situation where you're not forced to have fun like with those organised backpacker nights, where some twerp with a megaphone tells people to shout things in unison and move to the next bar and play games and all that.

Since then I've stuck with the sandwich job and last night I started my call centre job... And it's terrible.

The set up is basically a few desks and about 30 young folks (mostly students) each with an old laptop and a phone, the noise is bad enough that I have to cover my other ear just to hear the customer and my own voice and the whole thing feels like a scam that could be shut down by the fraud squad at any point.

I'm selling double glazing, (sorry, free consultations), with the power of cold calling tele-sales (the power to call strangers during dinner). But it's ok, I'm still me, except I'm doing sales jobs, which is bloody awful, the conditions are fine and the hours work out but I haven't been rejected this much since I was at secondary school.

The issues with the new job is the fact it's a job I have never wanted to do but thought 'well, I'll see how it goes'. Cold calling half of Auckland fishing for a lead is not enjoyable, even less so when you find out 6 sales or less means you have to come in for 'training' an hour early the next day. I got 4, but because it was my first day I'm going to go ahead and not go in an hour early, plus I had an hour training yesterday to be shown the 'booking system' (Google calendar) and play minesweeper for the rest of the hour, great training guys. The training was so good that I didn't see the script until 30 seconds before I had to start calling people. Fortunately I can read, so it wasn't a problem, but I immediately felt expendable, just another employee who will probably leave soon so don't spend too much time explaining how to do the job well.

There is another thing that I noticed, the guys running it are not the kind of people I want to work for. There is one (the guy who looks like Gil from The Simpsons) who is a salesman and that is the easiest way to describe him, the kind you are imagining right now, cheap suit, glasses, bad /receding hair and an arrogance that seems unjustified. the worst part was a moment when I was trying to secure an appointment and the guy started singing something loud enough that the customer asked why is there singing in the background. It's all very unprofessional which doesn't inspire confidence, so today I'm going to make sure they have my account details because I really don't trust these guys. Then I'll quit as soon as I get paid, so they were right if they thought I was just another employee that will leave soon.

So after all that I went back to the hostel for a cup of tea and a couple of Father Teds (including my favourite, series 2 episode 5) and decided that I'm not too old to party with students, but I am too old to work in a call centre with them. I'm looking for a different job now, even looking outside of Auckland, so you never know, I might be heading out of here soon to visit pastures new.

Speaking of pastures, here is the best song divine comedy ever did, from the year 1996, taken from one of my favourite Father Teds... it's My Lovely Horse!

That lightened the tone of this post somewhat. I also received an email today where some girl is looking for her boyfriend, but for some reason sent me an 'individual image' of her own backside, which gives me no incentive to help find her boyfriend, if anything it makes me care even less about her loss of a boyfriend.

I like the philosophical question, I mean, does anybody 'really' enjoy individual image? It's such a deep question that I don't understand it.

I'm going to look for new jobs now, until I have to go back to the call centre for another four hours of fun times, seriously, if anybody ever offers you call centre work slap them as hard as you can, those guys deserve it.

"Get a career in sales by joining our growi..."*SLAPPED*