I worked for a telemarketing company once, when I was about 20, uninsured, and had so many medical bills from long-term illness that collectors were threatening legal action. The state of Vermont’s job assistance program is actually what placed me with the company, because I went to them after I couldn’t find a job.
I lived in rural Vermont, where there were nearly zero jobs available. I had to travel 20 minutes just to get to this one. I was trained on ‘Political Surveys’ my first day.
Our call center did half a dozen things. Ordering overflow for catalogue companies, political surveys, solicitations for car insurance. Ordering overflow for infomercials and Vermont Teddy Bear. Some tasks were much easier than others.
The two weeks of day training in political surveys made me sick. You’re instructed to read a script, and if you don’t follow it to the letter, they threaten to fire you. If you say anything not on the script, your job can be terminated. They monitor calls, and tell you that randomly the politicians you’re working for will be listening in. We called people in Georgia and were instructed to lie and make them think we were local. I don’t know how a Northern Vermonter was supposed to sound like a Georgian anyway, but that’s besides the point.
We were monitored, they started putting keyloggers in our computers and told us we weren’t allowed to have newspapers or books near our cubicles because it was ‘unprofessional’. We weren’t allowed to talk to other coworkers because they said it encouraged ‘gossip’ and was unprofessional.
We basically had to sit in our cubicle with our headset on and stare at the wall if we didn’t have any calls. At night, often a lot of the callers would be drunk, high, or perverts. I once got threatened by some guy who tried to solicit sexual talk over the phone, and told me if I hung up that he would come kill me.
I was never rude to any of the people I called, although plenty were rude to me. I was cursed at, screamed at, and insulted repeatedly. Turnover was high. A lot of people quit. Most of the people working with me were elderly, disabled, or single moms. For some of them it was a 2nd job to support their kids.
Sometimes the head honchos would visit, and if there wasn’t enough work, they would send everyone but one or two people home without pay for the rest of the day. We shared cubicles between shifts, and were told that if we didn’t like what we got, we could leave and be replaced.
One time our autodialer broke and rang back everyone we called, every 2 minutes. I wanted to walk out, that day.
During the Holiday season they enforced 12 hour mandatory overtime. I worked several 15 to 18 hour shifts with a 104 fever and two infected ears. After they had us work all that overtime, they issued us our paychecks.
Which promptly bounced. So all the checks I wrote out to pay bills also bounced, and I was slammed with fee after fee for my bounced checks and overdraft fees. They called a meeting and ‘explained’ to us that their funds had ‘crossed’ in the bank, and that it would never happen again.
Two weeks later, it happened again. I was told by my senior coworkers that it was a regular occurrence. My supervisor had had six of her paychecks bounce in six months. They had been instructed not to talk about it, though.
I immediately called them and told them I would not be coming back to work. Ever.
I tried to get the money that was due me, and the fees that they put in writing that they were going to pay, but whenever I called them they told me that the person I needed to talk to was ‘unavailable’ and they would ‘call me back’, which they never did.
Since then, there has been some sort of civil suit against the company, but I’ve since moved away, and lost track of what was going on.
I could have probably done something about it, but I was only 20, and didn’t really know much of anything at the time.
I also decided I would rather starve or go to jail than work that kind of job again.
Because of that, I’m generally very nice to telemarketers, but I have no qualms about hanging up if they pester me. I will never, ever be rude to one, though. Frankly, tech/customer support people piss me off more than telemarketers ever will, but that’s a different ballgame.
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