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. this would be a small guarantee that i wouldn’t get messed with too badly however i performed today. and that felt great.

early in the meeting someone pointed out that there were some empty seats at the tables in the conference room. turns out the entire male of half of the morning shift new hire group from last week quit. only the three girls were left. lucky bastards. they got out of this tumultuous shit sandwich factory early and i commend and envy them for that.

the rest of the meeting was a lecture about putting more “bullets in your gun,” which is a phrase used around the sales floor for holding back features, terms lengths and zero-percent financing that already come with the products we sell to reward (and force) the customer make a purchase with us on a first contact call. we were told that we were supposed to make the customer work and sweat for every little thing we give them. i didn’t really listen. i just kind of took notes to look busy and zoned out while doing so.

pretending to give and take away imaginary things just to make a sale is juvenile and pathetic. i’m not planning on doing too much more of it. sadly, my gun is rather empty at this time.

another great thing that happened today was that the company changed the auto-dialer programs on the computers over the weekend. the two key changes were that agents no longer had the option of altering or deleting any of the data within each lead. apparently agents were deleting phone numbers of customers that said they wanted to be called back at a later time in order to prevent other agents from calling them back instead and getting the sale.

the other change to the dialer program was that its user interface no longer displays how many calls have been placed between each contact. that means that instead of sitting there for three hours without speaking to a single potential customer and seeing the dialer display that 897 calls have been made, now you have no idea how many calls have lead nowhere. this makes it impossible to put together in your head how bad the leads are for the day or how much your agent log-in number sucks compared to a co-worker’s.

the number of calls my dialer made wouldn’t have meant a barrel of monkey shit to me anyway. i sat down at my computer immediately after our meeting at 7:32 am and remained there until 1:16pm without my dialer making a single successful call or speaking to anyone who didn’t immediately inform me that the person i was calling was at work, didn’t live there anymore or that they had been called a dozen times before and wanted to ask to be put on the do not call list for the third or fourth time in a row.

it wasn’t like i spent any part of the day screwing around or not doing my job. i did my full due diligence and sat and stood there for almost six hours waiting for some unsuspecting geriatric to pick up the phone so i could empty my gun of “bullets” right into his or her chest. i even forewent my 15-minute break because i didn’t bring any food and couldn’t afford to purchase cigarettes on the way to work this morning.

these calling difficulties were the exact reason why today was the greatest day that i’ve had so far working for this company. i hate calling, pitching and harassing these poor bastards that we get on the phones. and today, thanks to our shoddy dialing system and my terrible agent number, i didn’t have to speak to or cajole a single one. the hardest part of the day was trying to look really depressed about the lack of leads that i was getting every time one of the floor managers came walking by.

in addition, there were a few amusing things that happened that also helped pass the time and break up the monotony of my quarter-day of failure.

early this morning one of the better salesmen had a woman on the phone who was being rude throughout the call and ended up hanging up on him screaming. apparently every time the lady said something mean or snapped at him he kept speaking to her in a softer-and-softer and sweeter-and-sweeter baby talk tone. it drove her nuts. a few minutes after she hung up she called back at the customer service desk and the guy had the call transferred back to him. he asked her if she had called to apologize and if she was ready to give him her credit card number so he could begin her enrollment today. kind of a dick move, but she did sound like kind of a dick lady, so i guess it evened out.

at one point today, for no real reason i could discern, 2 live crew’s unedited version of “me so horny” was blaring overhead as a co-worker was pitching a very hard of hearing woman in florida. it was bittersweet because it made me admire the xm radio dj for playing the original version of the song (artist integrity and all that) but i was also a little disturbed that i was receiving an hourly wage (albeit a minimal one) for sitting in an office chair while the words “me sucky sucky” poured down onto me from overhead.

a co-worker passed my desk and we had a brief conversation about how f-ed up a lot of the aspects of the job and work environment were. however, at one point she cut me off and said, “you must not have worked many phone jobs. i’ve had plenty and this place is the least shady of all the places that i’ve worked. believe me.”

i wanted to respond, “yes, and my current liberian fright wig militia sexually assaults and murders the least amount of children and eldery women of any other one i’ve that been in,” but she walked away too soon and it was also much to early in the day for a sub-saharan africa genocide rape joke.

during the final hour of the day one phenomena took place that fills my little dead black heart with joy whenever i see it. sometimes during the last hour or two of a slow sales shift the managers will try to raise morale and energy in the room by announcing an “power hour.” that’s when anyone of the sales agents who close a deal during that 60-minute period receive a $10 cash bonus right there on the spot when the order goes through.

the part about this i love is that whenever one of these is announced the managers always try and do it in a tough, cool, loud, bombastic sort of way. however, everyone who works at this place (myself included) are all dorks and none of us are tough/cool/etc. in any way.

today a power hour was announced as a manager missed a paperball jumpshot into a trashcan, another stood up too quickly with his expensive phone on his lap dropping it on the floor and another tripped on the center manager’s dais while tangled up in a curly headset wire.

sometimes it’s the little things like that in life that make it a true power hour.

here are some of today’s workplace tweets:

Guy at work rocking a yalmulke and Christian Audigier hoodie. Pretty much the best outfit ever.

1st call of the day was a woman driving home from her husband’s funeral. Come the f on, universe. It’s Monday for chrissakes. #suicidebynoon

What classic rock Monday means to me: Little old ladies screaming “Please stop calling me” in one ear & Aqualung blaring in the other.

Getting picked on at work by a dude wearing bad sneakers is always the pits.

98% of the people here have to augment the bad aspects of their personalities to excel at this job. In real life they’re normal people.

But that one guy is just a total c*nt 100% of the time. He probably farts on blind children at the mall.