Do you truly respect what it takes to do a job?

https://www.blogtalkradio.com/mynameisreeves/2022/07/18/understanding-the-grind-my-first-telemarketing-job

My first job out of college was telemarketing 

I often wonder if there a segment of the population who do not appreciate the grind of jobs we take for granted.  That is why I can fully understand people reevaluating their working situation after going through the Pandemic of 2020 to 2022.  

 

One such job that is often unappreciated was a job I had immediately after I graduated from college.

 

A job as a telemarketer.

 

I can tell you that shortly after I graduated from college I was really excited about getting off into the world and starting my own thing and the first job that I applied for as an adult straight out of college with a job as a telemarketer.

 

Now, this was a whole new adventure for me because I didn’t have a clue what it meant to be a telemarketer. And I learned very quickly that this was not the job I thought it was going to be. 

 

The first part about this job which was difficult was getting to the job. 

 

I did not have a car. I had to rely on the bus.  Of course, I had to learn that there was no one bus that would take me directly to my job.  I had to take a variety of stops just to get to the job. And the bus stop dropped me off a couple of blocks away from the job.   And since the job was not close, I had to learn very quickly about maneuvering on the bus schedule.   My work day started at 730 am so in order to make it, the first bus I had to take picked me up at 6:00am.  This meant I had to be at the bus station before 6 am in order to get to my final stop at 7:15am which allowed me to 15 minutes to get to work.

 

The telemarketing position was a sales job.   The customers were already existing customers and our job was to sale them additional packages.   We were evaluated based on the number of sales per day.  The system was automated so the computer would call random customers. 

 

The job itself had one training day in order to learn all the skills that you need to do the job. I was introduced to a script which I had to follow which enabled me to answer various responses. As you became more fluid, you could respond to various things quicker.  As stated, the system that I utilize was an automated system so they would actually call and all I had to do is just start talking.

 

Now, here is the funky part of the job.

 

My work day was 7:30 am to 4:00pm.  However, I was given 30 minutes for lunch which was un paid. I could take two breaks (one in the morning and one in the evening) for 15 minutes but those were unpaid.   As a result, if I wanted to get 8 hours of pay, I would either have to work until 4:30pm to adjust for the unpaid breaks or not take any breaks at all.

 

As I said, I only had a 30 minute lunch break. Unfortunately I didn’t have a whole lot of money starting off so I did nothave the ability to bring anything with me. The nearest place was across a very busy street. Unfortunately by the time I was able to cross the street, stand in line, get my order, 20 minutes had past which meant I had to rush through my food so that I could be back at my workstation by the end of my 30 minutes lunch break.

 

When I was working, the automated system was set up so that you had to sign in when you got in in the morning. You had to sign out for your 15 minute break in the morning and 15 minute break in the afternoon. You have to sign out for lunch. 

 

When you logged into your computer there was always a timer running. And they were actually two timers if I recall. One was basically clocking the amount of work time that you put in for the day. The other clock was to see how long it would take you to get individuals to sign up for the various programs that you were trying to get them signed up for. 

 

Going to bathroom was a unique adventure because you had to get off the clock because they did not pay you to go to the bathroom.

 

Unfortunately at the end of the workday because my day didn’t necessarily coincide with the bus schedule, I would have to go outside and wait for about a half an hour for the bus to come back to pick me up and then another hour and a half to get me back to where I was staying.

 

So my workday was effectively 730 to 4. I had to be on the bus at 6 o’clock in the morning. And I would get off the bus at 630 in the evening.

 

Now, I do not want to cast shade on anyone who does this for a living for a long period of time because I truly appreciate what they went through. But I can tell you as a 21-year-old right out of college student, this job lasted three weeks for me.

 

I learned a lot about time management.  You really had to work to get your eight hours so that even though I was scheduled for 730 to 4 o’clock, there were often times that the number of hours that I was working was a little shy of eight hours because they would not pay you for going to lunch, you would not get paid for breaks, and you would not get paid if you went to the bathroom. So you had to make up that time.

 

I learned very early on that it is sometimes easy to see someone doing a job and not necessarily understand all of the things they have to go through in order to make that job a reality. And I can tell you as someone who probably has snapped a more than my fair share of people on the phone just doing their job that I often have to be reminded that it takes a lot of work to do these types of jobs. 

 

It was a really unique adventure to know that I was on the call that was being monitored by a supervisor and that I was being a evaluated by not only my responses but also my ability to successfully sell products even in the face of people who did not want to be bothered, did not want to buy anything, and or were fairly belligerent when somebody was wasting their time.  It was a wild situation to know that I would be on the phone for 10 minutes just to get a successful outcome and there was no time to really appreciate that action because the moment that call ended within a few seconds another call popped up and I would have to do the same thing all over again.  I can not tell you how many times I used to look forward to peoples voicemails popping up or back in the day, the answering machine. Usually because that was the opportunity for me to go and put the computer on pause and run to the bathroom.

 

I always laugh when I think about this job because there were three of us who just graduated from college and we all got hired to this job.   Unfortunately, my two buddies quit after a week. They made it very clear that this was not the job they intended to be and they did not go to college to get the degree to do this type of job. I will admit, we were all struggling because we are all coming out of college with no major job in front of us so we all had debt and we all were looking to get started with our lives.  I have a lot of respect for them because they recognized very early that this was not the job for them. However I chose to stick this out for a little while. And when I say a little while, I mean three weeks.

 

By the time I hit the third week, I realized that this was not for me. 

 

I applaud all the people who are doing the jobs and they were a few people in there who have been there for a while and had figured out a routine that works best for them. But I realized very early on that this was not what I wanted to do. I just got a degree in biology so I wanted to stay in the science arena and this was not the science arena.

 

But what I realized really early was that for some people, at least in their situation, this was one of the few options they had available to them. So they may not have had the ability to walk away as easily as I did and the end as easily as my friends did. I will tell you that I got a true appreciation of what it means to be prepared to do this type of work.

 

If you learned early on that job that you are doing is not meant for you, there is no shame in walking away from it. 

 

But if you are interacting with people who are doing these types of jobs that you yourself know that you would never want to do or want to be in a position to do, just respect the fact that they are doing this job and show a little bit empathy to the reality that they had to do a lot of things to get the job and they are doing this job because it’s necessary not necessarily because they want to do it.