Andrew, 38, ex-insurance executive
I worked at one of those auto-dialler places that do insurance and telephone companies
mostly.
I have gone back to university and do not know how I will pay all my bills, except
that I am lucky to have a good wife who has a stable job with Bell.
This place paid rock-bottom, about $7 an hour.
They did a lot of commission altering. for example, most places like this have a weekly
rate for the commission based on how well the sales are going on that campaign.
If the sales were going well, the bosses changed the rate in the middle of the shift!
Sometimes in the middle of the hour! This made it hard to keep track of your rates.
I would never have bought insurance like this, in a two minute sale, you don't know
where the call is coming from and you can never speak with the person who sold you the policy.
When I was a boy on the Lakeshore, our insurance man came right to our house,
and sat down in the kitchen and talked to my mom and dad. He came from a famous name company that had a big building
in downtown Montreal and my parents knew him for years. The way things used to be done can be the
best way, sometimes.
Back to the high-pressure place. It was a lot of pressure for not much money.
You could be washing dishes at a submarine sandwich joint for less stress on the head. One night two of the top salespeople
broke out into a bad argument, they got up to their feet and almost were punching one another out.
The managers whisper in their ears to compete with one another, to get those sales
up. The managers too have to compete with one another. There was listening in on all the calls from several areas.
I thought that was against the law, we are only told when the clients who are using our company are tapping in. Not
when our own managers and bosses are cutting in.
The competition is so fierce that even the day and night shifts are turned against
one another. One night, a young girl who was always better than the day shift employees was lectured for being the slowest
on her team of four that night. She was working with two of the best on the floor, and her sales were still higher than
day shift.
You pick on the weakest to increase the fear of being fired, so the fear will get
the sales up. The girl started to cry. Instead of backing off, the tears seem to make the boss want
to dominate and control the situation. Any jerk who sells a lot thinks he has great people skills, whether or not he
does or not.
Since almost offices in the city paid the same or more, she had nothing to lose by
flipping out, which she did. Over a hundred people in the room, including the entire French end of the office, stopped
to listen to the argument.
I'll never forget what she said, when she left the room that night. She spoke for
a lot of us myself included.
I am not telling you. Sometimes pain requires privacy. Not listening in
on others' conversation. And everyone would know where this happened, too.
