Interviewing

Work

The market research gig is pretty great. I got my first racist comments on Sunday, and that was a little disheartening. For me and most of my generation (who got the "stereotypes are bad and false!" lectures in grade school), it's always a shock to see that the stereotypical people do in fact exist.

Also, one of my supervisors, let's call him Don; we like to chat! It's great! And I told him I'm queer today! He seemed shocked; but he also defended himself with the, "Well, we're not supposed to ask" blurb. Hehe.

I've been telling him a lot about my parents, lately, it seems. Don had actually monitored me on that particularly bad survey, where, instead of just hanging up, decided to stick around and finish the entire survey, which is normally five minutes, in 15 minutes.

I ended up telling Don about stuff:

Last year, my other supervisor wanted me trained on this specific type of customer satisfaction survey ("c-sat" for short), but it meant that I had to be put on other c-sats first. Unfortunately, several things were going against me.

First, you have to understand, that c-sats are usually completed with people who don't necessarily like surveys. They're just completing it because you're representating a company they use or like or at least, deal with or own something from. So they don't understand the "unwritten" rules (they're actually written, on this end) that go with saying, "Okay, I'll do your survey."

One question went something like, "So, how did you find out about [company]?" The fellow on the other end said, "Yellow pages." The next question was, "And how did you find the phone number for [company]?" He hung up profanely.

Second, earlier that day, my father had said something pretty stupid and careless and it would have been abusive had he said it on purpose, but I just can't tell if he's that dense, or if he actually realizes what he's saying. It was something along the lines of, "I love you, even if you're not in school", or more basicaly, "I love you, even though you're flawed!" Gee, thanks. And I guess I take those things pretty badly. I hate being called worthless. I'm tearing up even now, with at least one year's distance, just writing this all.

Anyway, I had to leave work crying that day.

Eventually, I got trained on the specific c-sats that is one of our biggest clients. I'm pretty good at it! Just, on Sunday, I got my first two racist fellows.

First guy couldn't understand what I was saying. We were calling into the States--the deep south, too! He couldn't understand me. Just before he hung up, I chould hear him say, "God damn foreigns!"

Wow.

Next guy stuck around for fifteen minutes. He made me spell out my name, the name of the company I work for, and then asked me--get this--"Where were you born?"

"Canada," I told him, rather forcibly. "Ca-na-da." Do you know where that is? It's up. Up. North. There. Yeah. Good for you!

Apparently, he (let's call him Billy) had called [company]'s call centre, and had gotten a fellow with a strong accent. And Billy just needed a number from the accented fellow, so that was all Billy understood, and it was all Billy needed. But Billy's biggest concern was that [company], which is a good ol' American company was putting call centres in this, that and the other country. Why should a good ol' American company have call centres located in other countries?

I was quite tempted to tell Billy that there are people who live in America who have accents. And I really wanted to suggest to Billy that, "Hey, maybe it would've been better had no foreigners come to America at all!" But I don't think he would have understood that.

Ah well.

Well, Don had monitored that call, and we chatted, and I talked about my parents and stuff.


Past experiences with supervisors

On my first actual day of work, I was supervised by, let's call him Bob. This was summer of 2006, I should add.

Well, Bob introduced himself to me, since I was new, and, for some reason, suddenly asked how old I was.

"Seventeen," I told him.

"Oh," he said. Then, "When do you turn eighteen."

Uhh.... Well, I told him my birthday, and then he made some comment about Scorpios being passionate. I think I just excused myself from any further conversation.


[post abandonned, unfinished]