Market Research Telephonists

To celebrate my unemployment, I decided to take a low-paid part time market research telephonist job to while away the empty hours.  In my naivety, I thought that doing some kind of paid work would make me feel more useful and fulfilled than spending the days in my dressing gown, eating left-over Christmas chocolate and watching Jeremy Kyle.  Oh, how I have regretted that decision.

For five hours at a stretch I have sat in a small three sided booth on an old, uncomfortable office chair (which has done WONDERS for my back) and made hundreds and hundreds of phone calls on behalf of various companies to unprepared and mostly unwilling recipients.  A stream of constant rejections, general disinterest and mild disdain has come my way, only to be broken by the few who were willing to take part in my survey.  A few brief moments of amusement were to be had, specifically during the Friday evening shift when one respondent decided to err from my carefully worded script and tell me just how "satisfied on a scale of 1 to 10" he was with me personally and bemoaned the fact that I had his phone number but that he didn't have mine.

Never again will I angrily hang up the phone on a market researcher - partly through a feeling of solidarity, though mainly because I now know that by not responding, my phone number will simply be thrust back into the swirling mist of numbers, waiting to be randomly plucked again by the computer and re-dialled.  The computer will continue to dial my number again and again until I politely explain to a caller that I would prefer not to be recontacted.  It is the only way.

A friend of mine who has worked for the same company described the work as being 'the closest thing to being lobotomised' and I have to say that I agree with her.  I would not have been surprised to find a trail of saliva hanging from my mouth by the end of a shift, or to be informed that I had been talking to the plant.  In all the years that I have been working I have never yet done any job so mind-numbingly dull and ultimately so completely unrewarding.

All the supervisory and management staff were lovely: kind; helpful; genuinely complimentary of  my telephone manner and capabilities.  I had to bite my tongue during quality control meetings (where a supervisor had listened in on one of my calls and made comments on how I was performing) to stop myself from pointing out that a basic level of literacy and a small amount of common sense was all the job required.  Instead I smiled sweetly at the comments I was given and went back to my box cubicle. 

Thankfully, I have found a full-time day job which will start in a week's time.  I have given myself the gift of sanity and decided not to return to the call centre this week, but to enjoy a week of real rest and relaxation before getting back into the 9-to-5 world.  I can understand now why some people would prefer to stay on benefits than to do a mindless job, however I still believe that were I to find myself unemployed again, I would rather be working doing anything, even market research, than languishing in self pity and benefit forms.

But in the meantime, spare a thought for the poor people at the end of the phone who want to ask for ten minutes of your time to complete a survey - they are doing a very boring, repetitive job for which they are not being paid much, and the only way to pass the time is to speak to you.  Decline if you wish, but please do so politely :)

K x