We have sinned, we have been lazy, but as always we have come crawling back with our tails between our legs here to tell you tales of our life. So much has happened since last we spoke, we will have to spread it over a few updates or something, here is one for now.
Some weeks ago I was beginning to worry heavily about the lack of hours at the bar so I took it upon myself to get a second job via reputable job agency, Gumtree and Partners. I ended up getting a telephone interview ten minutes after applying for a telesales role and after a brief sales patter filled chat about how the job didn't involve selling with a slightly manic sounding chap was told I had the job, and that I was to report for training the following day at the company offices. The training was scheduled to last from 9am through to 4pm which seemed a little excessive but what the hey, hours equal pay. Except I then found out that hours don't equal pay for your training day. Alarm bell number one. I followed the directions to the office that I'd been given and ended up in a delapidated shopping centre, home to an appalling food court and a couple of gift shops scattered amongst a collection of derelict shopfronts. At the top of the escalators I encountered a Turkish looking youth in an illfitting suit loitering outside a nondescript unit with some palm trees outside it that had seen better days. Correctly surmising that he was one of my new colleagues I enquired about his courtsuit attire, only to discover that he had in fact come straight from court on assault and affray charges after getting involved in a fight with a group of children outside his cousin's school involving baseball bats and knuckledusters. It was all OK though apparently as his uncle had enlisted the help of a top notch "bahreetah", which I discovered after some questioning is the Austro-Turkish legal system's equivalent of a UK barrister ("He's like one better than a lawyer but he's not a judge or that, you know?"), and the bahreetah was going to sort it all out and he was going to sue the cops because his dad wasn't well or something. So all's well that ends well.
We were joined presently by a local student who turned up late and smelt faintly of the weeds and we filed in to the office to meet our new employer who for legal reasons I shan't name on this blog. A rather sad looking, slightly portly gent of about 45, he presided gleefully over an office that was about ten foot square, his dirty open collared shirt and loosened estate agent tie perfectly complimenting the tatty collection of Aussie rules football memorabilia strewn across his desk, whilst he proudly demonstrated the "fully modern" spreadsheets that they had to use on their computer systems. "If you click here, twice, then the file will open, it's all there!" he explained helpfully, as we looked on in awe of his technical wizardry. If only I'd known that trick while working as an HR Systems Co-ordinator before I left for the Antipodes, my career may have been very different. I digress. The low ceiling of the unit lent itself nicely to the tainted air of regret and despair that hung bleakly around the smattering of motivational posters sellotaped to the wall (see the title of this entry for an example) alongside (my personal favourite)fanned out groups of photocopied fifty dollar bills haphazardly blutacked above each computer.
Lies.
We were provided a script to read which sadly I was unable to steal a copy of as I would've liked to have displayed it here in all its badly typed, nonsensically grammared glory, revelling in its array of (FAKE LAUGH)s and (CONTINUE WITHOUT WAITING FOR RESPONSE)s but you will have tyo imagine it for yourselves I'm afraid. It opened by referring to a mythical letter which we hadn't sent but that we told the client they should have received which should give you some idea of the ethics of the company. Essentially, although we weren't necessarily selling anything (a point estate agent tie man went to great labours to reference as many times as was humanly possible throughout the day) we were ostensibly arranging appointments for someone else to go and sell people a new scheme for gearing their mortgages toward negative equity and financial ruin, sorry, I mean "invest the tax that they would normally pay to the tax man to an investment of their choice".
Another interesting element of the training was that we all had to carefully write on the top of our scripts, "NO ASIANS". Estate Agent Tie explained that this wasn't a racist policy, just that the company they were contracted by for the project didn't really want any Asian people, that's all. He explained that, "If you get an Asian on the phone, a lot of the time you'll be able to tell by the name, but if not then you can often tell by the accent, but if that does happen then just explain that you've called a wrong number, or hang up, whatever". He gave us a quick demonstration of this by doing a non-racist impression of an Asian person in case we'd missed the non-racist point. Court Suit piped up to tell us, in thickly accented English, that the reason they didn't want Asians was probably "because you know they come over here and they buy up all of the houses because they get special mortgages in Asia where they don't have to pay interest so then they can buy all the houses and take over". I pointed out that surely it didn't really matter where they got their mortgages from if they were paying taxes on the house sales and putting money into the local economy, but he didn't seem interested. This continued at length with roleplaying and the like, until the last hour of training where we got to meet some battlescarred veterans of the callcentre who came on shift around 3. We trainees were paired off with a professional each and left to listen to live calls in action, which actually turned out in my case to entail sitting with a grumpy lad from Coventry while he dialled longlists of disconnected numbers from his supermodern Excel spreadsheet, each failure to connect almost visibly paining him as though a little of his soul was wagered on every dialling attempt. Concerned for him, I asked how long he had been working there. "Too long", he replied glumly, "nearly three weeks now". Good times.
Fully trained I headed off to the bar for my evening shift and then returned to the call centre the next morning to put my newfound fileopening skills and non-racist patter into full effect. I took my seat, and went through my list carefully and non-racistly removing any Asian looking names from the list before donning my Britney headmike and unleashing my selling prowess on an unsuspecting suburb of Melbourne. Reading the script exactly as I'd been instructed the (not actually) sales came flooding in; people reacted with delight to my (FAKE LAUGH)s, swooned as I told them of the FANTASIC (sic) investment opportunities that they had been nmissing out on, and cleared their busy schedules to make way for appointments with members of my knowledgable team of advisors who were in their area, but only for the next few days. With each nonsale meaning a crisp nonphotocopied fifty dollar bill in my pocket I thought back to my training yesterday, when I had inwardly scoffed at Estate Agent Tie's claim that you could earn $3,000 a day if you just stuck to the script, and shamed slightly by my cycnicism I leant back in my chair whilst rattling off another appointment made sheet and gave him a knowing wink, throwing a go-getter point in his direction, thinking about how I would soon be able to buy a car, and pay for the lessons to drive it legally.
Sadly of course, this isn't how it went down. In fact I limply dropped myself into a chair, stared forlornly at the tatty photocopied cash, hated myself with every fibre of my being before phoning up a confused sounding woman who explained that she couldn't have received the letter that we'd never sent her because, "I've been in hospital. For about seven months. I had a complete nervous breakdown apparently. In the hospital". I apologised for troubling her, told her it was nothing to worry about and that I hoped she felt better. The guy next to me asked me what had happened on the call and I explained at which point he laughed in my face while looking a bit disappointed and told me that she was perfect and that I should have pushed the appointment through. Thouroughly disheartened and disillusioned the rest of the morning dragged along in bullet time, an endless list of numbers dialled, speaking to people who clearly had better things to do on a Saturday morning than speak to a dejected sleep deprived chap from London about mortgages, or were certifiably insane. Lunchtime afforded a ten minute cigarette break, which on our return from we were reprimanded (but not in a reprimanding way obviously) for being late back from. "OK team, keep going, keep hitiing those sales, we can all make a lot of money this afternoon, you're all doing great! Just to remind you though, the break is ten minutes break, not fifteen. I'll let it go this time, but remember that next time". Le sigh. The afternoon was as interminable as the morning and I was genuinely considering walking out as the two thousandth person hung up on me, but somehow I made it through the day having racked up a grand total of zero appointments made, a record equalled only by my wages for that and the previous days, an equally round zero dollars. Hurrah!
A talk with the manager of the bar resulted in me being given an additional role in the kitchens of the bar, meaning that the next shift at the call centre was devoid of yours truly's presence and I have since resolved to never darken a call centre door again. Horrid business.
