Continued from Brownie's Body & Towing Company After leaving Brownie's Body & Towing Company, I had bills to pay so I answered an ad for a telephone solicitor for Trane Home Comfort Center. They hired me without asking any questions other than those necessary for tax purposes, and put me to work immediately. This was before call centers took that market over. I was in a room with about thirty other telephone solicitors, each of us at desks that were only far enough apart to allow someone to walk between them. Our job was to set up appointments for free estimates on home heating and air conditioning units, for which we were paid minimum wage plus commission. I don't remember what the commission was but there was one rate for setting up the appointment and a significantly higher one if the salesperson doing the estimate was able to make a sale. However, we had to read from a script. Every word had to come from one or another of the scripts that we were given. A supervisor sat in a glass cubicle listening in on us, one by one. A couple of times a day, the supervisor would come down the aisle, tap someone on the shoulder, say something that I could never hear, and apparently fire them, as they were never seen again. I am told that the main reason for this was going off script. Within a half hour, they were replaced by someone else. When someone asked a question for which there was no answer within the scripts we were given, which happened often, we were supposed to turn to the closest relevant script, and pretend that they had asked that question instead. Often, the person on the other end of the line would say, "What?," knowing that I had not answered their question, and usually hang up shortly after that. Since everyone was talking at the same time, in different places in the scripts that we were using, it was very hard to hear what the person I was talking to was saying, which was okay, because I probably didn't have a relevant answer for them anyhow. I hated that job. I stayed with it for only a month, just long enough to get my rent paid up for a month and to be sure my electricity wasn't going to be turned off. During that time, I hadn't set up a single appointment. When I gave notice, they tried very hard to talk me out of quitting, just short of offering me more money. When I mentioned that I wasn't doing a very good job of it anyhow, since I hadn't set up a single appointment, I was told that new employees were always started on the C list, which was made up of people renting apartments, and who were not likely to buy an HVAc system. Very soon, she said, I would be moved to the B list, which include lower income homeowners, with at least a chance of setting up an appointment. She told me she had listened in on me often, and that I was doing a great job. They didn't expect anyone to have any success at least until they got to the B list. I almost stayed, but I quit anyhow. From there, I went to ManPower, a temp job company. The first place they sent me to was Hoerner-Walforf Bag Company, who bought out my contract, leading to a job that I enjoyed very much. Continued on Hoerner-Waldorf
Having a job that pays rent and basic amenities is something. But struggling, daily, in the enjoyment of that job and staying on it is another thing. It's good that you eventually found your niche in the job you chose later on. You gained the "call-center's" supervisors' favor and offered you a better position. But you stepped into a leap of faith that a better job somewhere you'd enjoy was just there waiting for you.