Four years of college. Three years of graduate school. Learning a foreign language. Internships. Writing a thesis. Studying abroad. What did all these things lead me to? Working as a telephone debt collector for two and a half days. (In the middle of day three, I was accused of sleeping and asked not to come back. This was the best part of the job.)
Even though I only worked for a total 20 hours, I learned so much that could be useful and applied to my life to make it more successful.
Spelling Spelling is important if you want people to be able to read the words that you write or type. I'm no great speller. You won't catch me winning any spelling bees or even being able to complete most crossword puzzles. But I am equipped enough to spell words like "confirmation" and "accept" and "coming."
Reading Reading goes hand in hand with spelling. If you want to talk to someone named Micaela, you don't repeatedly ask for Marcella.
Excedrin Migraine Tedium breeds contempt and headaches. If you ever take a job involving any level of tedium, I recommend a fairly large bottle of drugs. Prescription or otherwise.
Enthusiasm It's really hard to show enthusiasm being a debt collector. But if you don't, they will fire you. Which I didn't seem to mind, but others might need to stick around.
Ultimately, I learned that maybe I'm not cut out for gainful, full-time employment. I'll stick to writing about cheeseburgers.
I learned a lot of similar things working at an AT&T call center. I didn't have to call anyone though... They were all calling me. And most of them were angry. I learned that when someone calls and they are frustrated because they don't know how to do something on the website, and you tell them it will be just a moment while you look it up, and then three minutes later they say something condescending about how dumb you must be that you don't already know the answer, and then you say "Well. You don't know either", they get mad. It's not considered proper call center decorum. It was not for me.
ReplyDeleteI busted out laughing after I read this. It is so true. Granted, I haven't been to graduate school, but I did just finish college. Given my degree, I am now qualified to do "creative things" (THANK YOU, LIBERAL ARTS). I haven't found anything yet, but I have discovered that I am really good at vacuuming, organizing, and finding typos in newspapers.
ReplyDelete