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 sooner sat down and logged into my autodialer when the guy in the cubicle across from me launched into a 10-minute anecdote/story/tirade(?) about how southern girls were way better than los angeles girls and how he had just returned from is vacation in georgia/florida and “hooked up with tons of hot bitches” and “fucked two of them.” the story was a charmless as it was profanity-laced as well as likely to have never happened. however, i let it run its course because he was a senior salesman and i figured that i would need his help later during a call or while trying to work the company’s arcane customer data software. which i did.

even though i had bombed during my initial practice call in training, i ended being the first person out of the new sales group to make a sale. it was a $4,500 product to a man in florida who said that he was on vacation in california at the time. we were instructed to rebut one customer objection but then on the second hand it over to a senior person by yelling “t.o.” and putting the person on hold. so i did. the salesman who had told the probably not true southern vacation sex story earlier in the day closed the sale for me.

after the customer was verified and the deal was done the sex story sales guy told me that guys on the floor usually pay out $5 to $10 cash to people who close out their calls for them. i used what is called a “power pause” in the business. i remained silent until he spoke again. it worked. he soon became infatuated with the song “white lines” when it came on the ubiquitous, blaring, satellite radio station music blaring from the speakers overhead.

later in the day the sex story guy and i bonded over the reasons why spider man 1 & 2 were far superior movies to the third installment. then he went on a 15-minute jab about how much he used to like to freebase pure cocaine and huff ether. he said that if he had unlimited money and didn’t have to work that he would pretty much huff ether all day because it made your ears ring. here’s to praying that he never makes unlimited money. i mean, who would close my sales calls to floridan septuagenarians for me.

on my break i went to the cafeteria and wolfed down a soggy pb&j that i made this morning before leaving for work. two of the guys in my training class came in and sat down. one hadn’t made a sale yet. the other had made two already. we commiserated about sales that we nearly had but lost due to our inexperience and also about different types of callers we had experienced to whom it seemed just impossible to attempt to sell.

before we went back to work the guy who had made two sales said that he felt kind of guilty that we were jacking up the prices on people and basically charging them as much money as we thought we could get out of them in order to earn a commission from the sale. earlier in the day at the orientation meeting when this guy was put on the spot he said that his favorite book was the bible, and i believe him because he seems like a genuinely nice person.

i told him that of course he should feel guilty. we were lying to people, manipulating them and screwing them over for profit. i told him that he should go home and pray to jesus and ask him for forgiveness. i told him at least he was a christian and had that option and that i was an atheist who didn’t believe in anything so i was going to burn hell no matter what. i was kidding but this seemed to cheer him up and make him laugh.

before i clocked out for the night one of the company’s veteran salesmen who’s now a floor manager came up and told me that he was the best salesman the company had ever met and that nothing mattered to him or should matter to me except making the most money possible no matter what i had to do.

that’s when i realized that money is something that people without compassion, creativity or intellect amass in order to help themselves feel better about lacking these things. not like i’m some loving, creative genius being, but at least i still know and admit how fucked up and wrong everything having to do with job is and i can’t wait to be able to quit it.