I’d forgotten how much I love working with people!

typed for your pleasure on 8 December 2005, at 5.21 pm

Sdtrk: ‘Your daddy’s car’ by The Divine comedy

As stated before, I don’t really plan on ever writing very much about my job on ‘Shouting etc etc’, cos it’s a hideous and dreadful position; however, yesterday’s workday stood out a bit, mainly due to its going-out-of-its-way-to-be-noticeable stupidity.

I work the first shift at a telemarketing fundraising place, which means I go in Monday – Friday, from 10am to 2pm. (Save your envy, I’m only getting paid $8 per hour.) On my shift, there are roughly 40 employees present, all doing the same bollocks I’m doing; calling churls in a couple of states, and requesting donations. Ever since Thanksgiving, though, the donations are down to a trickle, as people are obviously concentrating on buying gifts, giving to other charitable organisations and whatnot.

So over the course of the day, the two supervisors are walking up and down the aisles, loudly exhorting people to ‘speak up’ and ‘get strapped in’ and ‘knuckle down’ and other would-be motivational bullshit, but as anyone with a brain knows, all the loud talking in the world really won’t make a lick of difference, as it’s ultimately down to the person on the other end of the phone to decide whether or not they fire off a cheque or money order. Now, round the third hour of our day, our supervisor George — the fat surly one with a complete lack of a personality — goes up to the cubicles of several employees and speaks with them semi-privately. Shortly after, those employees collectively punch out and leave. It turned out that those particular employees hadn’t had a sale in a little over three hours, so they were sent home. The Fat Angel of Death merely passed by my doorway, as I had just gotten my first sale of the day fifteen minutes before then.

Now, maybe it’s just me, but does that not seem a little.. fucking stupid? Wouldn’t it make more sense to keep more employees in their seats in the hopes that they might get a donation, as opposed to having less people on the phones, and decreasing your chances? It’s the exact opposite of buying a mess of lottery tickets. That whole event struck me as being contra-productive at best, and petulant & childish at worst. Such a lovely work environment, I’m tellin’ yer.

I’d also just like to add that today, I wore my black cardigan with the HAL 9000 patch on it, and not one, but two coworkers, on two separate occasions, asked me what that patch was about. *grits teeth* Of course, in my mind, I’m screaming ‘have you never fucking seen “2001”??’ but then, I work in a place where more than a couple of people are into hip-hop. And when I say ‘more than a couple’, I mean ‘ninety-nine per cent’. Trying to explain something ‘artsy’ like ‘2001’ to these people is like.. well, I don’t want to say anything along the lines of ‘pearls before swine’, but you can’t say it doesn’t fit

Random similar posts, for more timewasting:

They hit the Eject button for me / Viva Lost Wages on January 12th, 2010

YES I'M AWAKE / Too bad she never met Kevin Bacon on January 31st, 2008

11 have spoken to “I’d forgotten how much I love working with people!”

  1. Zip Gun writes:

    Clearly, those co-workers who got shit-canned were not coffee achievers. Remember, coffee and jobs are for closers! This watch is worth more than your house, etc etc

  2. Davecat writes:

    Set of steak knives, brass bawls, etc etc

  3. Jeff "Wolfgang" Lilly writes:

    That Hal 9000 does drive-bys n’ shit, yo.

  4. Davecat writes:

    Which.. in a way, is kinda true. 😉

  5. SafeTinspector writes:

    I’m afraid I can’t do that shit, Dave.

  6. PBShelley writes:

    Yo Dave man, you is f*****’ with my BRAIN, wtf is a 2001???

    -BTW, Pearls Before Swine were a pretty interesting “group” on oddball label ESP-Disk (who also had The Fugs on it), way back in the Sixties; ironically enough, when that weird space-movie came out with that wacked out computer named Herb… or was it… Um…hm.

    Oddly as well, the singer of PBS was named… Tom RAPP! :-O

    Whhhoa dude! ANOTHER “PBS”

    That is so like… weird an’ shit!

    PBS (The Other One) and Lilykins

  7. PBShelley writes:

    Oops, hit Publish before I meant to add: The Pearls Before Swine album had a print included with it of Heironymous Bosch’s third (Hell-ish) portion of his tryptich (sp?) of “Garden of Earthly Delights”, which was why I bought it in the first place 🙂
    In fact, I used it as an image to use in my depiction of Hell in Le Book… scary as f***!

    Awesome painting!

    PBS & covering-her-eyes Lily

  8. Davecat writes:

    Aaand ‘Pearls before swine’ was also a bizarro film starring Californian Noise God, Boyd Rice and Douglas P., the mastermind behind Death in June. (I still have to watch my copy..)

    SIX DEGREES OF SOMETHING OR OTHER 🙂

  9. SafeTinspector writes:

    ‘Pearls before Swine’ is also a common colloquialism which means, basically, that you start with a pearl and end up with a pig if you play your metaphysical cards right.

    And here I thought you only got pearls if you pry the pig’s mouth open and embed a spec of dust in their uvula.

  10. SafeTinspector writes:

    OH OH OH! I just followed the link.

    WHERE CAN I GET SUCH AN PATCH?!? I want one that looks like his eye!

  11. Davecat writes:

    I got mine at a con years ago, but I stole the pic in my post from here.

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