THE WORST JOB I EVER HAD

People doing a job I absolutely hated! Photo courtesy of outbounders.tv

IT WAS DURING THE SUMMER OF 1990…

I was a student at UCLA and looking to earn money to help pay for the next school year, which I had planned to be my last as I was getting ever so closer to earning my bachelor’s degree.

I was hired as a UCLA camp counselor, but it unfortunately failed to work out for reasons that I don’t want to go into as I was let go literally the Friday before camp was supposed to begin the following Monday.

Which obviously left me up the proverbial creek.

I spent the rest of that June and the bulk of July looking for a job mostly in Santa Monica, where I was living at the time,

With nothing remotely close to luck of course as I particularly remember going into a store on Pico Blvd asking for a job only to be, figuratively speaking, shoved out the door.

I think it was late July when I came across an ad in either the Santa Monica Outlook or the Los Angeles Times for some marketing assistant or something like that; being that it was over thirty years ago I don’t remember what that ad exactly said.

I called the number shown and felt a sort of gladness when the guy at the other end said that he wanted to interview me; I then headed over to this office building on Pico just a few blocks east of Cloverfield Blvd, where after answering a few questions I was hired.

Which normally would be good news,

Except for the fact that it would turn out to be roughly five weeks (I’m not exactly sure; it was over three decades ago) of a virtual hell as the place I was hired was a telemarketing call center.

And a pretty bad one at that as looking back, it was a dodgy-looking place where I and the other workers were expected to do cold calls from the phone book, fundraising for various law enforcement charities much like what was seen on HBO’s recent documentary miniseries “Telemarketers”, which exposed the many scams those companies performed through folks calling people who didn’t want to be bothered, using aggressive tactics to get their money.

Add to that the fact that the callers, me included, were expected to work on commmission only, meaning that if we had a bad day with no sales, we didn’t get paid,

Which made us, in a way, slave labor – or at least indentured servitude labor,

And the fact that I had no idea of my being on the autism spectrum at that time and thus my having Asperger’s rendered me as completely ill-suited for telemarketing,

And it was a labor of hate for those few weeks.

I particularly remember two episodes which illustrated the practical hell I was in…

The first episode was during one evening – I was expected to work nights and Saturdays – when for whatever reason I had a emotional breakdown to the point where I was allowed to go home; I believe it was the way the supervisor was managing me as I felt like a slave picking cotton on a plantaion and he was my overseer.

The second episode had nothing to do with me and my personal animosities toward the job, but it showed how shoddy and scammy the whole thing was and how it preyed on innocent people trying to get their money…

I had managed to make contact with who I figured during the call was an elderly woman in nearby Venice, who was apparently lonely for some conversation and companionship as she kept me on the phone for a while talking about various things.

I managed to get a sale from her, but didn’t really feel good about it.

As one could perhaps imagine, I continued looking for a better job within the first couple of days of my being at that hellhole as along with everything else, working on commission only was and is a bad way to make money.

I eventually found a job at a clothing store in Westwood, which ultimately turned out to be a bad expericence as well as I found that I was not cut out for retail;

But that’s another story for another time.

Looking back on it all now…

I had quite a few jobs during my time in the workforce, around a dozen in all within a span of nearly 25 years,

Which I know is not good, but for a person with Asperger’s who didn’t know he had such for roughly half of those years, and for which there was no program geared to help those on the high-functioning end of the spectrum succeed in the workforce in those years, was more or less par for the course.

But if I was asked what was the single worst job I ever had,

It would definitely be that telemarking gig in 1990 that was so bad, not only do I not remember the name of that company,

I’m about 99% sure that I didn’t even include it on my resume in subsequent years.

Overall,

That telemarketing job serves as a bad memory, one which I would obviously like to forget.

Telemarketers aiming to get people’s money. Photo courtesy of rediff.com

How To Tell Legitimate Soliciting Charities From Scams Outside of Supermarkets

 

Not the particular Ralphs in my neighborhood, but I have encountered many a pushy solicitor at the one I go to. Photo courtesy of immovingtola.com

 

DEALING WITH PUSHY SOLICITORS OUTSIDE OF SUPERMARKET DOORS AND PARKING LOTS

 

I’m sure everyone has encountered them.

You need some bread, chicken, juice, veggies, or whatever, so you get going to your local Ralphs, or Pavilions, or Sprouts, or Trader Joe’s.

You get what you need, go through the checkout line, and as you cross the automatic doors someone sitting at some table says something along the lines of:

“Would you donate to (whatever charity they’re part of) to help the (whoever they’re supposedly helping)…”

And sometimes in the parking lot, as you’re putting your stuff in your car, some teenage boy – they’re almost always teenage boys – comes up to you with a box of candy, chips, and other junk food and does the pushy salesman thing; one time, after I had told a young man I how I don’t buy candy, he went on this spiel about how I could buy it for my friends and how he was raising money for some field trip.

I know it sounds harsh, and I have nothing against anyone trying to raise money to do some good, but…

Even though I have donated to some of those companies, I get irritated by most of the folks trying to get me to buy or donate to whatever charity they’re working for, because when I’m shopping for food I’m trying to handle my business and go, and I don’t have time for anything else.

I’m just being honest.

There are two big exceptions to this personal sentiment, however:

 

 

I can’t count how many boxes of cookies I have bought from this organization over the years. Photo courtesy of alpenhornnews.com

 

 

1. The Girl Scouts

It should go without saying that I love their cookies, namely the Tagalongs (the chocolate ones with the peanut butter inside) and the new S’mores. Plus I’ve been buying them for over 25 years; I remember as an elementary school P.E. teacher girls arguing over who will get to sell me their cookies.

2. The Salvation Army

Every year between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, whenever I see that red bucket and those bell-ringers, I’ve always put in at least a dollar; I think I donated a total of around $10 this past holiday season.

 

The thing that these organizations have in common, that have led me to donating to them on a regular basis for years?

THEY HAVE BEEN AROUND FOR AT LEAST A HUNDRED YEARS; 105 in the Girl Scouts’ case (they started in 1912), and as for the Salvation Army, they first organized in 1865!

I once joked with one of those bell ringers that when the Salvation Army began, the Civil War had just ended and the 13th Amendment, which officially ended slavery, had just passed!

 

Here’s my point:

I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me a charitable organization needs to have been around for a significant length of time –  70 years at minimum – and be well-known in America and abroad, to the tune of commercials, major websites, and the like.

The Girl Scouts, the Salvation Army, Goodwill Industries, and numerous other charities fit those requirements quite well.

However…

There are many other charities that don’t.

I always get very suspicious if whoever is bothering me for a purchase or a donation has no website, like those kids selling candy in my supermarket’s parking lot when I asked them for the name of theirs, or if their website’s a shoddy one, or if they have only been around for a few years.

One particular charity that was VERY aggressive and pushy in my area for a couple of years – I won’t mention their name – not only had a questionable website when I checked them out,

Not only had bad things said about them when I looked them up in the Better Business Bureau,

But they were apparently shut down as I noticed that they hadn’t been outside of my supermarket, or any others in my area, for a while.

That is a clear sign of a scam.

 

An organization that’s definitely NOT a scam, one which I’m always glad to give my money to. Photo courtesy of inthesetimes.com

 

 

Another scam that I read about on my town’s Facebook page was when teens would go door to door asking for donations for their high school sports teams, which the high school had said is not their policy.

One guy posted that he would always ask the name of their coach, and the kid would never know.

That’s when you know it’s a scam.

I would also ask what their win-loss record was, and then go on my Kindle to verify that.

 

Summing Up:

Always check out any charity that you’ve never heard of  who approaches you – often in an aggressive fashion – and asks for money.

Ask them for their website, address and phone numbers.

If they don’t have a site, or if their address is a P.O. box rather than a real brick and mortar building, or if their phone number is not in service,

Or if they are really pushy in their soliciting,

Then one word describes them:

SCAM.

The Bottom Line:  Be careful who you give your hard-earned money to.

 

Another supermarket chain where I have seen pushy solicitors who are apparent scammers; there’s one of these around the corner from where I live. Photo courtesy of immovingtola.com