I work in a call centre as a telemarketer. I have a 4 yr degree in Journalism, 3 years done for my degree in Psychology and am a law-school drop-out (whoopee). Like most of my co-workers, I have loads of impressive work experience and yet, here I am. A universally-despised bottem-feeding telemarketer. I wake up every day wondering when doctors will start prescribing valium for all call centre ‘team members’ (gag me). They should have a doctor on staff who doses you every morning as you drag your sorry-call-centre-drone ass through the ‘security’ doors. I want to scream at the corporate spin-doctors who decided that calling this dept. Outbound Direct Financial Services would somehow imbue it with a level of financial mystique–WAKE UP!! IT’S TELEMARKETING! It’s COLD CALLING. There is NO mystery, people hate us. YOU hate us. We hate other telemarketers. AND, lest we forget, PROCEDURES are there haunting us through every hard-won sale, tempting us to miss a bit of ‘mandatory’ wording and thus lose points for ‘failing compliance’. Imagine if the whole dept failed compliance. Wouldn’t that be a good thing, like when Arnie got air for the folks in Total Recall? No, silly me. We breathe what we’re allowed to breathe, say what we’re told to say, eat when they tell us to…hey, it’s Shawshank Redemption. Here’s a last little club-class, premium-level nugget for you, constant reader, because it is truly awe-inspiring in the scope of its stupidity. Check it out, an entire ‘team’ (gag me) got an error for abbreviating the word ‘verified’. I’m not kidding. The people who monitor memos gave the entire team an error for abbreviating ‘verified’ to ‘verif’—can anyone top that?
