My First (and Worst) Job

Earlier this summer, I wrote about the job I had for the shortest period of time.  Today, let me tell you about my very first job.

I did not get a job until my senior year of high school. I did not drive, so didn’t need money for insurance and gas (family rule), and I was on course for a full ride for college, so didn’t need to earn money to pay for that. My mom was fine with me not working, but she was also supportive when I decided I wanted to get a job.

I did not, however, want to work in fast food like my brother, or retail like a number of my friends. No, I had to be different. I heard about a job that paid better than minimum wage that didn’t require me to handle money at all. And, I got to set my own hours I simply signed up for the shifts that worked for me. I didn’t have to worry about my Speech and Debate schedule or Academic Olympics. I simply didn’t schedule myself to work those days.

Of course, it was also a job that led to me being treated worse than most customer service type folks ever get treated- multiple times a day.

What did I do? I called your house and asked you take a survey. I wasn’t selling anything (thank goodness), but I was trying to get you to answer questions. The short surveys were really easy. Pretty much everyone is willing to take 5 minutes to answer a couple of quick questions, but sometimes they wanted us to complete surveys that would take over half an hour. Even people who agreed to those surveys would often cut us off in the middle, saying they had to go. (Which was worse than people just saying no, because we couldn’t take partial surveys. If they didn’t complete the whole thing, it was treated on our log sheet the same as a rejection, but it was a rejection that took 20 minutes of our time instead of 2.)

Most of the time, our log sheets worked like this- we marked down people who took the survey, people who said “no” to the survey, numbers where there was no answer, and bad numbers. Bad numbers were disconnected, belonged to businesses, or people who made threats (happened more than once). We had to log the type of interaction and the time of the interaction. (Yes, on paper, with a pencil. This was the 1990s. I don’t think there was a single computer in our call center.)

One very bad day, the center didn’t have enough work for us to do. So, we were handed a survey they had already called around on and told to call back every number, except for the ones that had answered the survey. Now, call backs to the refused/no answer numbers were pretty common. But in our training, we had been told never to call back the bad numbers. This time, they wanted us to call the bad numbers back. I ended up voluntarily taking a short sift that day.

 

Remember that I was 18, didn’t drive, and didn’t need a job. I think I worked there for maybe 6 weeks (making it 3rd shortest job I had. Next installment will be about the 2nd).

First of all, their shifts didn’t coincide very well with the bus schedules. I had to work 4 hours at a time, and I couldn’t get over there after school, work a 4 hour shift, and still catch the last bus home, so I rarely worked on weekdays. On weekends, well, there were the speech and debate tournaments and wanting to do things with my friends. So after a while, I quit. I didn’t need to give 2 weeks’ notice, and didn’t. In fact, since I needed to give my notice at the start of my shift (due to the manager’s schedule), they didn’t even want me to work my last shift.

 

It wasn’t the worst job ever, but it did teach me that I didn’t want a job where I had to reach out to people. That experience made me realize I would never be in sales or anything where I had to convince people to do things. Jobs where people came to me, wanted the service I was offering, I could do, but I never wanted to coerce people into something ever again.

It also made me realize that I had no desire to work in an actual call center. It’s just not an environment I thrive in.

 

What was your first job? Your worst job?