What’s the worst job you’ve ever had? What made it bad and how long did you last?

  • got yelled at a lot too, be nice to people who call they likely don’t want to call you any more than you want to receive the call

    1. comma splice
    2. I hate being mean or obtuse to callers using my phone to sell me things or defraud me too. I’ll bet the humanity on the other end eventually caused you to change jobs too – because the seediness was a known quantity at the start but being in the line of return fire was definitely the catalyst. This is the goal.
    • In respect to 1) you’re absolutely correct, that should be two sentences and not the horrible run-on that I created.

      In response to 2), yes I can understand being wary of spam callers, there weren’t nearly as many 15 years ago when I was doing the job. It was targeted research, so people who’d opted in to being contacted for marketing purposes (“how is your new toaster working out for you”) or local authority requests for comment (“are you happy with the new park that opened”).

      I’ve had some real howlers the other way though (with actual scammers) so I understand the frustration, one woman who was obviously a spam PPE caller yelled at me “don’t you like money!” after I had politely declined,and there’s no dealing with that. In the end the easiest thing to do and a definite improvement on being nasty, is just hang up, in my opinion.

      • Lord, I remember back when the worst thing calling was either a telemarketer, or a collection agency.

        Some of them were unpleasant, but not nearly as unpleasant as the people who are trying to straight up steal your shit these days.

        Barring a known number, that phone can keep on ringing.

        • I have a contact in my phone called Spam (with a picture of Spam), and I add any number that doesn’t pass the sniff test within 30s (particularly Robo-spammers, urgh!), it can very helpful to get a repeat call and the picture of a can of spam tells me not to bother picking up.