Writer’s Block #1

The most boring job experience I’ve ever had was during high school. I wanted to start making more money than what I got for working around the house. So having absolutely no experience whatsoever, I took a job as a quality assurance representative at a startup telemarketing firm near the airport. I trained with about 15 other people who were at least 5 years older than me. Training consisted of one week of learning how their computer and phone systems worked. The final exam was, I’m not kidding, writing down the 50 United States and matching them to their abbreviations. In short, anyone with the equivalent of a 3rd grade education was qualified for this job.

We were placed in a room that was no bigger than fifteen feet by twenty feet. I distinctly remember a hole in the wall big enough to fit two basketballs stacked on top of each other. Our workstations were desks about two-feet wide, crammed next to each other in eight rows of six. Our computer monitors left little room for any kind of paperwork, though I don’t remember there being much of that. We sat on bar stools. No arm rests, no back support. And we were there for six hours a day.

“Work” consisted of putting on headphones and listening to recorded sales calls. We had a quota of 120 calls to listen to in a night. If we didn’t meet the quota, we’d lose our commission for that day and get the base pay of five dollars per hour. That wouldn’t be so bad if we had a stream of calls constantly coming at us. But no, a lot of time was spent waiting for a recorded call to come to your station. I remember once waiting ten minutes before receiving a call to evaluate. I learned quickly that doodling was prohibited. Eyes were to be kept on your screen at all times, even if there was nothing to look at. Based on extremely specific criteria, we were supposed to rate each call with a 1 or a 0 rating. We were essentially grading the salespeople on their technique. “Pass” or “Fail”.

It should now be apparent that this job required the absolute least possible mental effort. Shelling peanuts would have been more engaging. We were robots. Our eyes glazed over, staring at monochromatic computer screens. Our muscles atrophied from requiring the use of only one finger to press one of two buttons while the rest of the keyboard went unused.

After my first month, I was called over to my supervisor’s workstation. That’s the other thing, this company was so “startup” that the managers didn’t even have offices. They were in the same shitty desks and bar stools as the rest of us. That thought is probably the most comforting of this whole story. But I digress… my supervisor wanted to discuss with me some of the calls that I had been reviewing. Apparently I had failed to properly identify some “0″ calls. I had incorrectly marked them as “Pass”. She asked if I understood the grading criteria, and if I wanted to keep my job. I nodded without saying a word and she sent me back to my station.

Those were the longest three months I can remember.

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