The Idler

Hitting the Phones

Having left University with no idea where to start on life’s great decline into the cold world of work, I signed on for a recruitment day being given by one of those Employment Firms that are wacky, new age, forward thinking etc.

The group leader, Sam, whilst not dazzling us with his executive teeth and oily suntan, explained how we were going to brainstorm, teamwork and ‘think outside the box’ for the next eight hours while potential employers watched. Realising with horror that I was whoring myself, I began to demonstrate ‘teamwork’ by letting the other group members come up with a ‘framework’ on how the hypothetical Fox might cross a river with a Chicken and bag of Grain. (This actually happened.) Anyway, despite my lethargy and horror at joining the corporate world of brainstorming, I was actually chosen by an employer and offered a miserly salary to go and phone people and try and sell bits of computers.

My immediate line manager was a thin rake of a man, a poisonous gossip and a raging alcoholic whose team talks at the daily sales meeting involved swearing, swatting imaginary flies and trying not to fall over. We then hit the phones with gusto - until the 5th person told us to Fuck Off because he wasn’t a computer shop, that he was the local chemist and didn’t need a new mouse with an easy scroll button. As our call output was monitored, I soon devised cunning methods to beat the system. This involved phoning the speaking clock and various fax machines. Even the ear splitting scream of those machines was preferable to explaining the difference between a laptop and a printer to some odious gimp who was minding his Dad’s computer shop and had no intention of buying anything because he was 13.

The final straw came as the MD, who had had taken to making presidential style walkabouts of the sales floor, encouraging the top sales guys, haranguing the new guys like me for having no balls, imparting his home-spun sales philosophy on us all - “The world is an Oyster, Ben my son, an Oyster”- and surreptitiously playing ‘Tit Cricket’ with the girls in the office as they squeezed past him in an attempt to place another �1.26 profit on the sales board.

I think my resignation letter contained the words, ‘You wouldn’t know what motivation was if it came along and punched you in your face, you horrible, cock-sucking little Hitler,’ and it neatly summed up my shame and displeasure of ever having worked in the dank little hell hole.

Ben Atherton