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What's the worst job you've ever had? (self.askuk)

submitted 8 months ago by Oneeightnine to c/askuk

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

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[–] filtoid@lemmy.ml 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I mean, I was good with people hanging up during the spiel. Saying "sorry I'm not interested" is more than fine and likely to put you on the upper end of calls that's day. Swearing or getting upset isn't acceptable and fails to recognise that neither of you want to be on that call.

However telemarketing has a better response rate than paper based surveys, and the data is used to drive decision making. A lot of people complain when things don't work out for you - like local council decisions on new amenities, but if you don't submit your opinion you can't be heard. It's not perfect but it is used to define a surprising number of things.

Wrt to you MIL, yeah, it's not nice to be on the recieving end of hostility, I get it can be annoying but as I implied above nobody chooses the job, I personally had to take whatever I could get and I was too young/not out of work long enough for JSA (plus JSA is a pain to get anyway, but that's a whole different story).

[–] anothermember@lemmy.zip 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I usually ask them who they're calling to speak to, since if they're not a cold-caller they would know my name. This usually makes them hang up. With your inside experience, is this a good way of handling it?

[–] filtoid@lemmy.ml 1 points 8 months ago

This is an excellent way of screening. The company I worked for was an opt-in service. So all people being called had at some point agreed to it (though most forget ticking the box on a form or whatever, which is totally understandable), and we therefore had their names, so it wouldn't have worked for what we were doing. But yes if a cold-caller doesn't know who they're calling then it's a good indication you don't need what they're offering.

I heard a podcast with Scott Hanselman (a technologist in the US) and he had a phone system where you had to say the name of the person you wanted to an automated gate-keeper, which sounded like a really cool system, and similar to the sort of screening you're doing.