Working for the weekend: Job 5

My incredibly sexy days of burger-flipping behind me, I was back at school with not enough disposable income and lots of music I wanted to buy. I saw an ad in the college newspaper for a telemarketing job. It paid fairly well for a shit job and I got to set my own hours. I decided to apply. I had no idea what kind of degradation awaited me.
The telemarketing company's offices were in a large, cavernous building full of escalators, rental space, and other businesses' offices. The building smelled like rubber. I don't know why. It was always kind of dark until you reached your destination. I don't know if the building's owner was trying to lower his electricity bill or what, but the only comfortably lit areas were the occupied offices. I had to ride the escalator up to the second floor, get on another escalator, ride that to the third floor, then go through three pairs of glass doors and a reception area, then another glass door, to get to my workstation. That's a long time to think about how shitty the next few hours were going to be before you even got to the place that was going to make those hours shitty. I felt like I was willingly walking into an ambush. "Just turn around and go home," my inside voice told me every time I stepped into the building.
Guess what I sold over the phone? NASCAR videotapes. I could make a lot of easy jokes about the people who watch NASCAR, the people I sold these videotapes to, but I'm sure you've heard it all before. Anyway, I hate to make sweeping generalizations. Okay, I'll do it anyway. The average NASCAR fan is a moron. Also, most of the people I called were drunk or had already purchased the videotapes and complained about how shoddy they were.
The telemarketing company (whose name I can't even remember) supplied us with helpful cheat sheets so we could lie convincingly to the customer. These sheets had the name of every NASCAR driver, his number, his nickname, and his hometown. We were to use these sheets as follows:
Me: Hi, I'm calling you to sell you this terrible fucking NASCAR videotape. I hear it's a real piece of shit. You're a jackass who has previously purchased other terrible items from us. Please overpay us now. You will get your shitty video sometime in the next 78 weeks.
Sucker: Well, it sure sounds good, but I don't know...
Me: It's got the NASCAR seal of approval. Say, who's your favorite driver?
Sucker: There's only one driver in NASCAR as far as I'm concerned, and that's Dickless Todd McGinty.
Me, looking furiously through my notes for McGinty's information: Yeah! Dickless Todd! "The Sodomizer"! Number 48! Alright, you and me are on the same page. He's my favorite, too! Watching the race on Sunday?
Sucker: Hell, yeah. I'll take 25 tapes.

There were many things to hate about this job:
1) Talking on the phone for hours is not really my bag.
2) Selling things is also not really my bag.
3) NASCAR, in addition, is not one of my passions.
4) The turnover rate was so high that anyone who lasted a few months got promoted to manager, or "team leader" in the asshole vernacular common in demeaning work, if they wanted the promotion. Team leaders were unbearable creeps. They were super-extroverts, loud, obnoxious, prone to yelling things like "Come on, team. Let's sell!" If you sold a lot of the worthless garbage, incentives were offered. These incentives were supposed to make things fun! and exciting! and improve office morale, while bringing us together as a team. Anyone who tells you things like these deserves to be stabbed in both eyeballs and set on fire. Incentives were often an extra five dollars for the shift, getting an extra break, shooting Nerf basketball for ten minutes every hour, candy bars, Cokes, etc. One team leader didn't grasp the concept. Her incentives were shit. One of them was a chance to contribute to a list of the top ten reasons why she was a ditz, pasted on the bulletin board. Another incentive was an opportunity to work an hour of overtime. What the hell was wrong with her?
5) They were convinced that when we sold a lot of product, we had discovered some magic new technique. They would hover around us and ask us lots of questions about what we were doing and why we thought it was so successful. Then, they would make us stay late and keep selling. We got overtime, but I've never really given a shit about overtime. I figure that when I work later than my schedule dictates, you're stealing valuable living time from me that I will never get back. On the flipside, when we had a slow night, they seemed to think we were purposefully fucking with them. This was usually followed by a lecture and a disgusted look. If we were really having a slow night, we would get sent home early. They didn't dock our pay, though, so I've never figured out how this was supposed to make us feel bad. Send me home early every night, jerks. Idiots.
6) The big boss man looked like he was in his early thirties, with short brown hair and a goatee. Every day, he walked around the floor a few times, looked at us with contempt, and walked back into his office. The whole time I worked there, I only saw him wear four things: a dark suit, a brown sweater, a white t-shirt with an elephant on it that said "Bob Dole for President," and a white t-shirt with an elephant on it that said "Nebraska Republican Party." Both elephants were starred and striped.

My last day on the job came as a surprise to me. I wasn't planning on quitting. I was bored, selling useless NASCAR shit as usual, when an announcement was made. We were done selling NASCAR videos. We had a new client, and here were our new scripts. Now, we were promoting the Republican Party and calling random homes, urging them to vote for the Republican Party candidates. I am a lot of things, not all of them good, but I am definitely not a member of the Republican Party. I didn't feel comfortable shilling for them for pay, and I was pissed off that they didn't ask if we had any objections and hadn't told us during the job interview that we might be shilling for a political party. I sat there for a minute, wondering what the hell to do. I called several numbers, and got yelled at by a lot of people who shared my political leanings. I distinctly remember one man yelling, "You're a worthless cocksucker." "He's right," I thought to myself. "I'm definitely sucking Republican cock if I keep making these calls." I got up and left. No one noticed (there were a lot of people working there). The next day, I didn't come to work. They called several hours after I was supposed to be there, asking me why I didn't show up. "I quit," I said. They didn't sound surprised. Not even slightly. About 15 people quit working there every single day.
Telemarketing sucks.

I watched these movies last week:
The Leopard (Luchino Visconti)
Gang of Four (Jacques Rivette)
Yaaba (Idrissa Ouedraogo)
Lost and Found Video Night, Vol. 2 (various)