After I found out I didn't get the job at the radio stationradio in Longmont, I needed to start looking for an actual job in Denver. The first thing I did was prepare airchecks and go around to all the radio stations to apply. The one thing I should have done when I first sent out resumes was to include the airchecks. I probably would have gotten a lot more call backs if I had done that. However, this gave me an opportunity to see where all the stations were located.
I had also been scanning the classified advertisements in the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News looking for radio jobs. I never saw any listed, but I did see a listing for someone wanting to hire a DJ. I figured it wasn't radio-related, but I knew how to DJ. The ad specified that they would be taking calls until 3:00 that afternoon. I saw the ad around 2:30pm. I kept calling, but no one picked up the phone. I figured they already found who they were looking for, but I still got angry that they weren't even willing to pick up the phone and explain that to whoever happened to call.
After hitting up all the local radio stations, I started looking for other lines of work in the classifieds. One of the things that I frequently saw were ads for telemarketers. I had received telephone solicitations before. While I know I didn't like them (and had given some of them a hard time in the past), I thought it would be a pretty easy way to make money.
I called up one company. The ad was seeking "telemarketing pros." I inquired about the job. The person asked if I had done telemarketing before. I said no. Then he said, "THEN I'M NOT TALKING TO YOU! I'M LOOKING FOR TELEMARKETING PROS!" and hung up the phone.
One ad I found was looking for operators to conduct phone surveys for chiropractors. They were called "The Doctors Group." I got there about 3pm. It was a couple of rooms with phone banks. I filled out the application. The woman in charge asked me if I was ready to start right then and there. I said, "Sure." What they were doing was calling people up in the phone book and asking them to participate in a survey. The operators would ask a series of questions. At the end of the survey, they would let them know that for participating, they would get a free visit with a chiropractor. They would then set up an appointment with a chiropractor in their area. I didn't see anything wrong with this, but I also didn't know about the reputations of chiropractors.
The hours were Monday through Friday 3pm - 8pm. We were required to get at least five appointments a shift, which comes out to one an hour. It was certainly a reachable goal and I thought I could do okay at this.
My training consisted of me sitting in the cubicle next to someone who was making outgoing calls. I was given the script of the questions we were supposed to ask. They basically all had to do with whether the respondent had any issues with their backs or experienced back pain. The woman in charge told me I had to stick to that script in order to set the appointments. However, the person she put me next to was asking a bunch of questions that weren't on the script. This kind of confused me. After about an hour, she started having me make the phone calls. One of the things we had to do was talk a little loudly on our end of the phone. This was because there was no monitoring system, so the only way the woman in charge could tell what was going on was by hearing our end of the conversations.
After an hour, I had to start making calls. Most people were cooperative with the survey, but wouldn't take the appointment. I only got a few people who got upset at me calling them. But on my first day, I was able to make two appointments. The woman in charge said I did a good job and that I would probably do better the next day.
She was right. I managed to set four appointments that day. Things were looking up. But the next day, which was a Friday, I only made two appointments. When I came back on Monday, I only made one. On Tuesday, I made one, but very soon after I made that, the woman in charge told me it wasn't working out and I could come in the next day to pick up my paycheck. For the first time in my life, I had actually been fired. I couldn't believe it. I mean, I had been let go from a couple of previous jobs (here and here), but never fired. This was a major shock to me.
It made me feel completely worthless. This was a job that anybody could have done and I couldn't do it. I can't say that they didn't give me a chance, because they did. I looked back and realized there was some stuff I could have done differently. One thing I would do with my phone pages was go back and call numbers where the residents didn't answer or were busy. I should have just kept calling numbers without going back. I would have stood a better chance of getting more responses. Also, I had plenty of opportunities in when the respondents said they didn't need the appointment, but knew someone who could use it. I didn't think we could do referrals. The main problem would have been identifying where they were and which office we could set the appointments at. However, the day I was fired, the woman in charge announced that if someone could refer us to a friend or family member, we could go ahead and call them up. I really felt cheated.
All of these thoughts were occurring to me on the drive home, which took about 30 minutes. I was absolutely in tears. But by the time I got home, I realized that The Doctors Group was really not a good place to work. Three out of the five nights that I was there, I came home with headaches. REALLY BAD HEADACHES. It was a lot more stressful that it looked the first couple of days. I was actually relieved that I didn't need to make any more calls to set up appointments.
But this meant I was going to have to go back out the next day to find a job. Well, you know what? I did find a job the very next day. I'll go into detail about that tomorrow.
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