I’m watching Telemarketers and it’s reminding me of shady jobs I’ve had in the past.

I worked for Rent-a-Center doing collections. It’s a place that preys on the poorest people in America, getting them to pay extortionate interest on rent to own furniture, appliances and electronics. We had customers who would end up paying thousands of dollars on a couch that wasn’t even new when they got it. Even worse was people who would hit hard times and get their stuff repoed and end up with nothing to show for thousands of dollars in payments.

My job was to learn when these customers got paid, or when they got their disability or welfare check and hound them over the phone or in person. If they didn’t pay, I’d be sent out to knock on their doors. If that failed I’d be sent to repo it.

It was a soul crushing job. I’ve had shit jobs, but I’d never had a job that made me feel like I was doing harm to people before. Some of my coworkers would deal with this by demonizing the customers, acting like they were all deadbeats who deserved to get fleeced. Others would blame the customers, saying shit like, ‘Anyone stupid enough to buy here was going to get ripped off by someone, and it might as well be us’.

I couldn’t do that, so I started getting fucked up at work like Pat Pespis. I started pretending to do my job, dialing the number and then hitting the flash button and faking the calls. I’d get sent on a repo and my coworker and I would go out to eat or to the mall and pretend they wouldn’t answer the door. I expected my collection stats would fall low enough that I’d eventually be fired, but they barely moved at all. It turned out that hounding people to pay a bill wasn’t actually doing much.

  • thebartermyth [he/him]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    1 year ago

    Interned for a season at a small tax place for super rich people, like a 500k in rental income types, every single one would either do a nudge nudge or go on a rant about how much they hate taxes and it was my job to just stoneface at them until they finished and then arrange a “partner consultation” at a way higher billable hour. I made $14/hr there and it was not worth. They also didn’t write me a reference after because I “didn’t the follow dress code”.