this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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What's the worst job you've ever had? (feddit.uk)
submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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What's the worst job you've ever had? What made it bad and how long did you last?

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[–] soloner -4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

got yelled at a lot too, be nice to people who call they likely don't want to call you any more than you want to receive the call

Yeah but you're the one getting paid for it and they're not! Sorry, but you shouldn't have worked there. Don't blame the people you're intentionally irritating for getting mad at you for your own poor choice.

Disclaimer that I never yell at these people but I will often hang up on them after the first "sorry not interest" gets ignored. If other people want to yell at them to get the message that they don't want to be bothered, more power to them. Fuck telemarketers.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

"sorry, I'm not interested" and hanging up is fine, cursing my family and telling me what a PoS I am, not so much. I think it's clear you've never had to work in the service industry if you think that working a job like this dehumanizes you and justifies rudeness of this scale.

[–] soloner -4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Calling you names and insulting family is not the same as simple yelling. Now you're changing your narrative to straw man me into defending behavior like that.

You deserved to get yelled at if you are calling people to waste their time to market a product to them. It should be illegal, but at best it's unethical, and you contributed to the problem.

That said, nobody deserves to be called names, slurs, or death threats, or whatever other new things you decide to include in your narrative.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You ended your post with "fuck telemarketers", on a post where I was highlighting that I hated having to do that job, so yeah, you demonstrate a distinct lack of empathy, if there's a wider context on that comment please let me know, as I'm not trying to strawman you, when you explicitly stated I deserved to be treated like that.

The fact you think telemarketing is about selling a product and not market research (about all sorts of things including political opinions, or NGOs etc) shows that you don't know what you're talking about and seem like an angry person. I'm going to disengage now, but I hope you can find peace :)

[–] soloner -2 points 7 months ago

Telemarketing could be selling items or could mean market research.

Since you're now bringing up the market research aspect (which most people don't associate with telemarketing), ok, let's tackle that new narrative:

Good market research practices involve paying people for their time and energy spent providing feedback about a product or behavior. Telemarketers do no such thing. They just bother people to solicit from them. You are suggesting that just cuz it's for research that makes it better?

Don't tell me I don't know what I'm talking about - It doesn't matter what it's for - calling people with solicitations of any kind is wrong.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I never yell at these people but I will often hang up on them after the first “sorry not interest” gets ignored.

Nah. Here's the rules:

  1. don't yell so they have an excuse to hang up
  2. ask them to repeat things, and parts of things, and more things, as some sweatshops have rules that say the customer must understand the pitch before they can be hooked legally.
  3. never say yes
  4. never hang up; let them
  5. question everything
  6. remember not to give out ANY personal information - not even confirming they have the number they think they dialed - until they can concretely prove whom they are. (This is a bailout for legit organizations that call you and accidentally sound like scam calls. They should immediately ask you to look up their 800 number and call a given extension within that publicly-advertised phone tree to somewhat confirm their identity)
  7. now the game is on. Your goal is to rack up the minutes they spend on you. With enough players, it finally becomes a losing proposition to run a phone sales/scam organization; but it's gotta be a lot of people.

My record is 75 minutes with a 'Bell Atlantic' rep who was fluid with details and gave me an edge to contrast the data-points, and who finally hung up claiming she wanted to validate my information, Mr Thomas, to which I replied "Thomas, who the hell is that?" before the line went dead. I loved rocking out phrases like "well are you lying now or were you lying then?" I sometimes hope she took a different job the next day and hope she's seen success. My name isn't Thomas.