Elementary, My Dear

[littlegirltoast]

This evening I was doing a study (SURVEY we are not allowed to say survey but we think we can trick people if we say "study" because doesn't it sound official) for Ontario Lottery & Gaming Corporation. You're not allowed to say what it's about up front, which means even fewer people want to do it than usual, because you reasonably sound like a

Comments

[grammardog]

An outgoing call centre is no cup of tea. I'm always amazed hearing about people who work at one for a decade or two... how?

I lasted 4 hours, left weeping, and never contacted them or darkened the door again, even to collect my pay.

[littlegirltoast]

Oh no! I hate to think of you having had such a rough time!

I found it the hardest, in terms of wanting to cry and never return, in the first few days. It was hard to adjust to the amount of sad loneliness one is exposed to when one randomly canvasses the population, or at least the not-instantly-hanging-up population.

I think I got more recently widowed respondents in those first few weeks than I have ever since. The first night I worked, I told Kira I had asked someone about their household and received the response of a plaintive "I'm a widow, and I'm all alone!"

She said, "yeahhhh, you're not cut out for this."

She was right!

[grammardog]

God, yes. I spoke to an elderly woman who kept forgetting I wasn't her daughter, and kept asking me about my new washer and all sorts of things. It was too sad for me.

[grammardog]

P.S. I know I wasn't supposed to laugh at any of this, but "that's a weird thing to pretend" really gave me a hoot.

[sugarmommaless]

Me too! I chuckled over it for several minutes!

[jsangspar]

A lot of people have a lot of crazy ideas about what privacy means. I hope the fantasticness of your anecdotes so far makes up for the lameness of the thing you gotta do to eat food and have a bedroom! I am saying they are fantastic.

[metonymy]

I worked in a call center doing surveys for the Center for Disease Control about childhood immunizations and I got so much abuse. I think my favorite call ever, though, was when the automatic dialer connected me to a Sears tire center. Yup.

You're not an asshole, just someone trying to make a living. There are a lot of shitty jobs out there and somebody's got to do them.

[hyperallergina]

Did you know that back in 2004 I too worked at a call center? Yup, for 2 whole weeks before I was fired for being bad at convincing people to give me their mortgage information over the phone.
I got all sorts of bull crap during that time. The most popular seemed to be concerning my eternal slumber. I got loads of people telling me that I was going to hell for doing what I do and why and various levels of description concerning this hell.
The worst part was that at the end of the day, I always agreed with them.. yes sir, I am despicable.... no sir, I'm not American... yes ma'am, I am a piece of shit.