July 2009
34 posts
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WatchBuy My Ninja Wares
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day one
i’m a grown man, married and live in los angeles. i have bills, the economy sucks and i’m too old to ask (or receive) help from parents anymore. besides, one of them’s dead. my father passed away earlier this year and left whatever assets he hadn’t drank or pissed away to two different ex-wives — a meth addict with fake tits and chinese internet mail order bride he stole from a man in another...
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WatchIs Your Car Currently On Fire?
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day two
it’s 9 a.m. and i’m sitting in a windowless classroom filled with former and present alcoholics/drugs addicts, struggling musicians/actors/writers and a few black guys. aaron begins our training by having us fill out and sign the company’s employee paperwork. one of the documents that we must sign and initial states we forfeit all salary bonuses that we have accrued if we miss more than 4 days of...
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day three
we spend the morning going over the products we are selling, the sales scripts and the sales tactics explained to us on the previous day.
i’ve come to the realization that what we are being trained and prepared to do is wrong and against pretty much everything that i and even most world religions (that i don’t even subscribe to) consider wrong. this is the first time in my life that i’ve had a...
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WatchSpecial Ed UFC Boat
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day four
today we spend most of the class reading our scripts to aaron as he sits in front of the class and picks our sales pitches apart. some people are really good at this (so good it’s kind of creepy). some people are horrible and appear to barely be able to read.
when i am called on i am asked to read/perform the one script that i had not gone over the night before, which also happens to be the most...
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day five
this is the final day of our telemarketing sales training. we spent the morning running practice sales leads into the computers and listening in on calls as they take place on the sales floor.
this is the desktop wallpaper of the computer that i was assigned to practice at. it’s a screen grab of alec baldwin from the film glengary, glengross. i’m pretty sure it was placed there unironically.
...
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WatchCat Murder Restaurant
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day six
today was my telemarketing training final exam. i had to make as simulated sales call while my boss and co-workers listened in on speakphone. i passed the test. tomorrow i begin my first day as an actual telemarketer.
this afternoon when i came i had a 102 degree fever. i think that my body is trying to kill me so i won’t have to actually go in to work tomorrow.
with any luck i should be dead by...
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day seven
so now it’s real. today i worked my first six-hour shift as a one call close sales telemarketer.
after a brief orientation in a conference room where we received instructions about the company’s newly enforced anti-profanity and sexual harassment policy (by two company reps who swore throughout their presentations) we were turned lose at our own work stations on the calling floor.
i had no...
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WatchCouples Skating With Death
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day eight
everyone has cancer.
today on my second full day on the sales calling floor i spent the better part of my six-hour shift talking to no less than half a dozen people (mostly in florida and new york) who claimed to have and/or be in the hospital with cancer. i convinced none of them to purchase any of the products that i was selling, even though i spent a good 15 to 25 minutes pitching each of...
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day nine
came back from my sales training meeting to discover that naveed had stolen my cubicle, work station and headset. naveed is a fucking dong.
my first call of the day i had an old man from battle creek, michigan on the hook for a pretty expensive product that he seem interested in but i failed to build enough urgency (i.e. make him feel that this was a limited time offer – even though it wasn’t)...
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day ten
made my first real sale (by myself) yesterday right at the end of my shift. a $4,650 product to a retired house builder in colorado springs. at the end of the call he kept telling me, “dave, you’re a great guy, thank you so much.”
dave is my fake phone name. i hated hearing him say it so much i thought i was going to puke.
was instructed to hang up on a handicapped man in virginia beach...
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day eleven
yesterday i got to watch mario give the “will smith” pitch. this is where a salesman tells a customer that he just sold a warranty to will smith last week and that even will smith had to purchase on the first call in to us or else we wouldn’t have been able to sell him one. i’m pretty sure that we’ve never even sold a warranty to the guy who played carlton on the fresh prince of bel-air, let alone...
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WatchFloridian Pirate People
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day twelve
yesterday one of the tattooed rapper guys was standing up in his cubicle with his monitor on the partition wall screaming at a customer, “listen, motherfucker, i don’t get paid to give free quotes, i get paid to sell these motherfucking things.”
this went on for at least five or six minutes and was very enjoyable to watch. although it does make it difficult to make your own sales calls while he’s...
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day thirteen
even though i get off the freeway at the victory blvd. exit every morning i still feel like a loser.
they wouldn’t give me a parking pass so i had to park off property three blocks away. charming start to what promises to be another shitty week.
received a lecture today on how to demand money from customers when in “the money box.”
wish the money box would fill with zykon b while i was in it.
...
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WatchFree Online Karate Lesson
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WatchLion King Pimp Game
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day fourteen
phone system is all messed up today. not only am i getting old dog shit leads (per usual) but they half the calls aren’t even going through.
i’ve listened to over 250 outgoing answering machine and voicemail greetings in the last four hours. my dialer has made over 1,000 calls and none of them have been to a single real person. i haven’t made a pitch all day.
also, the manager who balled me out...
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day fifteen
forgot to clock in this morning at 7:05 when i got in today. had to wait until after 7:15 meeting was over to do so. according to the time clock i was late twice these week so far when actually i wasn’t. fuck.
just had a manager say, “you’re getting paid to outsmart nitwits” in the 7:15 training meeting. kill me.
my headset’s not working. my phone dialer’s not working. my computer is frozen....
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WatchWas It A Bangbus Situation?
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day sixteen
today is the day i actually wholeheartedly gave up.
it started this morning during the 7:15am daily meeting/pep rally. we were given a speech about how life was a shit sandwich and the more bread you got the better the shit tasted (i.e. because you were tasting less of it). we were told that if we took “no” for an answer from our customers here at this job then we would have to take it for an...
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day seventeen
they gave us a truncated morning pep talk/sales instruction meeting today. the managers just looked at us and said, “if you haven’t learned it by now you’re fucked. now get out there and sell.” inspiring as always.
after yesterday’s experiment of shooting video while screwing around on calls i figured i would push the envelope today and see how much i could get away with. turns out a lot.
the...
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WatchJesus Saves (Through Telemarketing)
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day eighteen
it’s monday. in today’s 7:15 meeting we were told to remember that we were always being watched and monitored even if we didn’t know it. comforting.
we were also told that all of us were going to make a “fuck ton” of money this week and to make this week “a sprint and a cash grab to Friday.” fulfilling.
i decided today that i screwed around and rebelled so much last week that i had better apply...
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day nineteen
today’s 7:15 am briefing meeting welcomed in a batch of new employees. there was an ex real estate agent, a barista, a medical supplies telemarketer and a guy who i think said he was in the show zumanity in new york or las vegas.
keeping in line with the theme of “people who sell can do whatever they want,” i sat in the back of the room by some of the guys who make a lot of sales. it was seven...
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day twenty
this job is killing me. i haven’t had more than four hours of sleep a night all week. i’ve been lagging and missing deadlines in my other creative work outside of this job. and last night my wife and i had our first uncomfortable disagreement of our marriage. it had to do with me being in a bad mood and tired from the job all the time and how i insist on complaining about it but never ask about...
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day twenty-one
the novelty has completely worn off of this job and from my current situation. this place is just shit evil and crooked and the part of humanity that sometimes makes me doubt whether the human species even deserves to exist at all.
i’ve learned all that i could ever want to learn about the seedy side (which is also the only side) of direct telemarketing sales and all i want to do now is come up...
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day twenty-two
today is friday and this is great for two reasons.
first, it’s the end of the work week. and, secondly, i called in sick and didn’t have to come in today, which is good because reading over the last two or three days of posts it’s become clear to me that i’m experiencing some type of miniature spiritual and mental collapse. it’ll be great not to have to come back and endure the fluorescent...
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day twenty-three
today was monday. when i woke up this morning i was tired and dreaded getting up to come to work. but once i got here it wasn’t so bad for reasons i will explain shortly.
our 7:15 morning meeting was a cinch today. i received kudos because two of my post date sales went through on friday when i wasn’t even at work, so it counted as if i had worked that day and made two sales for the company....
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day twenty-four
fired.
and that’s how the world of telemarketing ended for me today. not with a bang but with a whimper.
i came into work this morning tired and sad as usual. sat through a bullshit meeting with a bunch of cheering and swearing as usual. and then sat down at my auto-dialer and started making calls as usual.
it was a really mellow, nondescript day. i made a sale to a lady back east. it took...