The Worst Resting Job I Ever Had
About three years ago, I made a video on my YouTube channel about how to find the best resting job for you. Because whether you’re in acting work or not, the bills still have to be paid. Sucks, I know.
This video crossed my mind on the way home this evening as I cast around for a topic. My initial idea was to take you all through every resting job I’ve had. But I ended up reliving one of my jobs so vividly that I knew I had to keep the others on the back seat. It was a job that, thinking about it, may have honestly been my worst job ever. And I’ve done a lot of jobs! I’ve been a cleaner, a cashier, a freelance writer and copy-writer, a workshop facilitator, a civil servant, a holiday park entertainer - and that’s not even everything.
But this job…let’s just say it wasn’t for me.
Without further ado, here’s the story of the worst resting job I ever had.
In the Beginning…
It was the summer of 2015. My course at The Royal Academy of Music was coming to an end and I needed a job. All I knew was that I wanted something flexible so that I could attend any auditions that came up. I can’t remember how, but in those last few weeks of RAM, I heard about The Call Centre.
I won’t share the name of it here; the job was only bad because I personally hated it. Loads of other people hated it too, but there were some who claimed they would always work there in between performing work. So I don’t want to drag its name through the mud. They were adequate employers, I never felt mistreated. It was fine.
I’m still writing this post though, so there’s that.
The Call Centre (TCC) is infamous in the London acting scene. It was allegedly started by actors to employ other actors in flexible resting work. And it definitely lived up to that end of the bargain; you could drop a shift with 24 hours notice if you could provide evidence of an audition invite. It was perfect on paper, so I and two other girls on my course applied and got the job.
Welcome to Wines
There were many clients at TCC; businesses from every industry that needed us to call their customers. I’ll refer to these business the way we did in the office, rather than use the company names.
My RAM-mate Chloe and I began on Wines. The training was promising. The first day was spent learning about different wines: the regions, the grape varieties and the manufacturing process. I’ve always been a bit of a nerd so I found it all fascinating. We also had to learn the different tasting notes, which included a wine tasting.
If only that was the actual job.
Wines had three teams: Exclusives, Reactivation and Recruitment (I can’t believe I can still remember all this after 10 years - jeez…). Chloe and I started out on Exclusives. These were existing customers. They got a regular wine box and our job was to sell them an extra one-off speciality case. Because six bottles of wine a month is not enough, apparently.
I learnt pretty quickly that I am not a hard-sales person. I’m not good at selling people things they don’t need and I don’t care about. And the commission didn’t motivate me either. But I did my best, talking up these cases like they could bring about world peace whilst slowly loosing the will.
Wines is where I met my friend Alex. He, Chloe and I trauma bonded over our soulless employment, sharing the colouring in we’d do during calls.
Little did I know that I was living the good life.
My lack of sales prowess led to my demotion to Reactivation. It wasn’t literally a demotion, but… well, you’ll see.
Reactivation was customers who hadn’t ordered a subscription box for 6 months to 2 years. Our job was to entice them back into a monthly plan with a discounted box for their first order. The calls were cooler, but not completely cold. But you could feel the difference.
Calls went from entitled people passive-aggressively lecturing me about wine to one of the following responses to my opening sales spiel:
“I cancelled my subscription because I’m a recovering alcoholic.”
“I cancelled the subscription because the person who’s subscription it was is dead.”
Yeah.
So the loosing the will intensified. But I was getting auditions. It wasn’t going to be forever. And I wasn’t on Recruitment. I wasn’t cold-calling.
The 5th Floor Meeting
At least, from my memory, Wines was on the 5th Floor. TTC operated over several floors. Above us was Candles. Elsewhere was an account that we called by the name of the company, ruining my naming plan for this blog - let’s just say its a well known consumer magazine.
Floor 5 was Wines, Birds and Blinds (foreshadowing). Each account had their own managers, and then there was the manager for the whole floor. One morning, instead of going to our desks, we were told to gather around the floor manager’s desk. Anticipation hung in the air. Had too many people taken extended toilet breaks? Were we getting a raise (unlikely)?
No. Our manager proceeded to give us a fairly tactful speech concerning the use of what he called “substances outside the legality of the law” (that turn of phrase got a modest round of applause). Basically a potential client had been having a tour of the building, and it was clear that someone had been taking some recreational herbs recently.
To be fair, I think the manager’s stance was quite reasonable: “Outside of work, do whatever you want. But don’t come in honking of weed.”
That was the one thing I appreciated about TCC. There was no expectation for you to like the job. Even the manager’s acknowledged that, in many ways, the job was shit. The people who came back time and again were the people who could sell and earn big on commission. For everyone else, it was about hanging in there until you could get out.
The Birds and The Best Day
At some point it was decided that I didn’t have what it took to really succeed in Wines. And so I was moved a few meters across the floor to Birds. “Great!” I thought naively.
Dear reader, it was not great.
Birds was the account of a well-known wildlife charity. Unlike most accounts which were outbound, we were taking inbound calls to process free wildlife kits for people. The catch? We also had to try to sign them up to a regular monthly donation. We had to ask three times during the call, a technique called (shockingly) the three asks.
This was around the time of the charity fundraising scandal. So in our training with the charity, they were extremely emphatic about not doing the three asks if the customer disclosed that they were unemployed or retired. Which was apt because the majority of callers were pensioners or unemployed parents getting the kits for their kids.
Unfortunately, TCC, needed us to bring in sign-ups. So every other week I was called in to explain why I hadn’t asked 84-year-old Mildred for 10 quid to save the sparrows.
If my memory serves, by this point I’d been offered my first acting job. There was light at the end of the tunnel, but I still had bills to pay. So I had to hang on in there. More lows were in my future, but before that came the high point of my time there. I arrived ready for another day on Birds to find the early arrives, scattered on the swivel chairs and a room of black computer screens.
The system was down. Company wide.
No calls could come in or go out. We couldn’t access any software. Nothing could be done. Obviously, the higher ups were trying to find a solution, so we had two options: sit tight until the system came back online, or go home.
Some people took the second option; I remember one woman ran her own business, so she decided she could use her time more wisely there. But I wasn’t leaving until they sent me.
Why forfeit pay when you can get paid to do nothing?
For hours we waited, chatting doing office chair races, doing the activities we’d brought to kill time on the phones - books, puzzles, colouring. We also chatted and got to know each other. Call centres can be quite isolating places. There’s not mush time to get to know your co-workers, especially with strict break lengths. It was nice to have human interaction that wasn’t a transaction for a change.
And the system never came back online. It was glorious!
Love is not Blinds
It was my last week at TTC. in seven days, I would be in Manchester for my first day of rehearsals. But before that, I had one more account to conquer: Blinds.
Blinds was the cesspool of Floor 5. The pay was minimum wage (£6.50p/h at the time). The calls were the coldest in the company. Our day was calling random people and seeing is they wanted a free quote for various window coverings. In the training we were told about the clients shady business practices. It was rough. My solace was deleting the profiles of any cold calls that didn’t pick up.
It was on Blinds that I had my worst call. It was a cold call, so as always I dialled hoping that no one would pick up. Picked up calls were recorded and managers would randomly listen in on calls to monitor our work. But pick up they did, so I went into the script.
This is how the conversation went:
Me: “Hello, I speak to [Name on Profile], please?”
Customer: “Yes, speaking.”
Me, hating my life: “Hello, this is Michaela calling from [Name of Client]. I just wanted to see if you wanted a free quote for any blinds, curtains or shutters?”
Customer, laughing at me: “You do realise you’ve called a science laboratory, right?”
Me, wanting to die inside: “I know that now. But still, do you need a quote for any blinds, curtains or carpets today?”
Customer, with utter derision: “…No.”
Me, not caring about being recorded: “Would you like me to delete your details so that we never call you ever again?”
Customer: “Yes. Where did you get my information?”
Me: “We got it from a company called Marketing File - would you like me to give you their details so you can contact them and get your information deleted?”
I eventually won her round. But when I tell you my face was burning. I know I was bright red with shame which, being brown, is impressive.
But all bad things come to an end, and with that last week on Blinds I was finally free.
Final Thoughts
What did I learn from my time as a Telesales agent? I’m not built for sales, for starters. Yes, it’s a skill I could learn, but I’m not learning it to sell other people’s tat. In hindsight I’ve also learnt that co-workers make all the difference. I’ve since had experiences in jobs that were better for me, but were so much worse emotionally because of the people I was working with.
I also legit learnt a lot about wine and British wildlife, which was fun! (I learnt nothing about blinds, sorry.)
And my advice for anyone looking for resting work? Unless you love sales and/or being shouted at, don’t work in telesales.