Job No 2

As part of my efforts to prepare for a year of grinding poverty I have taken on a second job, cold calling for a mortgage broker. I finish work at Job No 1 each evening and then march across the city to start all over again.

Generally I have not found it to be unpleasant work. The boss is a nice guy who gave me some good advice about how best to structure my home loan while I’m away in the US. The other telemarketers are the usual mixed bag, but we do our best not to offend each other, and the shift supervisor quit at the end of my second week (note: no causal link), so I was quickly promoted and given a pay rise. It’s been good.

Last night, however, was a bad night. At the moment, in addition to the cold calling, the team are hand addressing envelopes for a mail-out and, with two of the team failing to show up, I sacrificed half of my calling time (which can lead to commissions) to addressing envelopes (which can lead to RSI).

I ended up not getting any leads at all, despite making a number of rather embarrassing calls. For example, I rang the homes of not one, not two, but three other mortgage brokers who, unsurprisingly, didn’t want one of our consultants to give them a call. One of them asked who does our aggregating and wanted me to get the boss to call him to see if there’s something they could do together. That’s right, last night I couldn’t get a lead, but I became a lead for one of the people I called!

Then, horror of horrors, I unknowingly called my ex-boss. She recognised my voice immediately and congratulated me on getting first class honours. We chatted for a while and talked about catching up for dinner soon. I wasn’t able to convince her to talk to a consultant. That’s right, last night I couldn’t shift a free mortgage reduction analysis to a friend!

Red-faced, I told the team that I’d just called my former manager. They agreed that was just about the most humiliating cold-calling experience you could have, with the possible exception of calling a former lover. None of them have ever done it, but it’s nice to know that there are still new lows left for me to sink to tonight.

On the train on the way home I experienced a mild outbreak of dissociative identity disorder as my supervisor personality counselled my telemarketer personality on a bad night’s work. I was gentle, but firm. “Another night like that,” I said to myself, “and I’ll have to let you go.”

“Another night like that” I retorted, “and I’ll quit!”