A cold draught blew through the warehouse, even though it was supposedly a summer day in July. The man addressing the small audience of hopefuls pulled down a retractable projection screen and pressed a button on the remote control that he held in his hand. The brief video glorified the joys of distributing telephone directories, for that is what the job was all about.
Half an hour later, I was driving away from one of the loading docks, my old second or third hand (I was not sure, I had paid CAD$500 for it) Corsica sedan groaning with the considerable weight of Telus telephone directories stuffed into the trunk and the back seats and the passenger seat next to me. Armed with a map and a very rudimentary knowledge of the layout of the city, I drove out of the parking lot. I was in Burnaby and headed for Vancouver. Like any new immigrant, I was elated that I had found a job; well, not a real job, but work of some kind. My ability to make money would depend solely on how many telephone directories I could distribute on a particular day. My hopeful innocence was in for a shock.
I had been in Canada for barely a month. It was July 2001 and summer was slowly creeping in around the Lower Mainland, as the Greater Vancouver area is generally referred to. Thumbing through the city map kindly gifted to me by our friends Natala and Don Goodman from Seattle, I worked out the shortest route to the area I had been allotted.
It turned out to be a voyage of discovery. The Angus Drive locality of Vancouver tends to house some really wealthy people who live in beautiful houses with long driveways, security cameras scanning their automated gates. Why would these people need a telephone directory, I asked myself. For the most part the houses were empty, their well heeled residents holidaying in Europe or other parts of the globe. The only humans I met on these properties were Filipino caretakers. They were a cheerful lot, always had a smile for me and as I left the telephone books with them I couldn't help noticing that they drove better and more expensive cars than my beat up blue sedan!
After a couple of days of pounding the pavement in rain ( I was learning that in Vancouver it can rain at any time of the year!)and shine, I sat down to do the math. After crunching the numbers, I realised that I was wasting my time : I was making less than the minimum wage ($8/hr at that time) after factoring in the amount I spent on gas! I had seen the regular phone book distributors drive into the warehouse with delivery style vans of humongous capacity, dollies to carry large amounts of books at the same time, and the whole family being roped into the task! Ah, it all made sense now; they could probably deliver at four times the pace I could and their volumes translated into more dollars as the payment was proportionate to the number of books you delivered.
I had no regrets quitting that gig, though I must admit that the job gave me an insight into the social stratification of some parts of the city and therefore was a learning experience.
Thus began a series of experimentation on the job market front, some happy some not so happy, and some downright painful. I shall begin with two of my worst jobs, so I can end this post on a happy note.
THE TOTAL CON :
I had heard that selling a product was not an easy thing....but I had not realised just how low companies and people can sink to make a profit. My education was about to begin....
The company was in the business of selling vacuum cleaners door to door. They would call up people at random and ask if they would like to participate in an "air quality" survey. If they said yes, a bait would be thrown in at the conclusion of the telephone survey: we would like to thank you for your participation in this survey by giving you a small token of our appreciation; one of our staff will call on you to deliver this gift personally at a date and time which suits you!
Armed with this "gift" - in this case it was a set of kitchen knives - and the vacuum cleaner in the trunk of my car, I would ring the doorbell. Once having gained entry into the house, I had to sweet talk the victim into allowing me "just 15 minutes" to demonstrate a product that was guaranteed to improve the air quality in the house! Of course the demonstration would take approximately 45 minutes at the best of times.
Needless to say, the price points offered would vary with how much resistance I would encounter to the sale. At the highest level, it would nudge the $2000 mark....I know this sounds atrocious, but obviously my commission would be larger as I only had to pay a fixed amount back to the company. All kinds of payment options would be trotted out to ease the pain of parting with such a ridiculously large amount of money.
At the distress sale level, I could let go of the machine for only around $750. In my one week with the company, I sold only a couple of them. I met people in various stages of financial health : there was a single mom struggling to feed her kids, there was the retired couple who did not really need a vacuum cleaner as their current one worked perfectly. What really made me throw up this work happened late one night.
The prospective customer lived in a ramshackle old house. The yard was unkempt, the grass grew wild, a willow tree drooped over the shiny new cab of a semi. The family of four had finished their dinner, it was a cool summer night and I went over my spiel. Best value for the money, incredible and indestructible motor, awesome suction capabilities (one of the standard demos was to suck in a pile of sand weighing about 10 pounds, conveniently at hand as part of the demo kit!), lifetime warranty, etc. etc. The woman of the house watched from a distance. The man listened, intrigued by all the technical jargon I threw at him. I could tell that he was a gadget guy; he would love to add this new toy to his collection.
The haggling over the price began. This man wanted it, but at the lowest price. As per procedure, I excused myself and said, "I have to talk to my manager to approve this very very special price for you, sir!" I called the office and of course I did not really need approval, I only needed to enact the scenario.
I beamed at the man and said, "You are a very lucky man indeed, sir! My manager said he will make an exception in your case. The machine is yours!" I began to get the paperwork ready when the wife intervened.
"Can I talk to you privately, please?" she said.
We walked out into the cool night and stood in their little driveway.
"Do you see that big rig?" she pointed to the semi parked under the trees. "My husband bought that brand new recently, that is is livelihood, he is paying a huge sum of money every month on the loan that he took to buy it. He loves new toys and I can see he is very tempted to buy your vacuum cleaner. But please understand that, honestly, we cannot afford it. I manage the house and the groceries and I know how hard it is to put food on the table every single day so my family can eat. I'd like you to think about that."
I looked at the semi, its grille glinting in the moonlight filtering through the trees. Then I looked at the woman before me. Her face radiated stress, anxiety, worry. She was ageing before her time. There was no debate, I had made up my mind.
"Thank you for bringing this up, ma'am, I do understand your plight. Rest assured : your husband is not going to get this toy." I picked up the vacuum cleaner, thanked her for her time, wished her good night, and walked slowly back to my car.
The next day, I called up the company and told them that I was not the right fit for the position and would like to quit. A great sense of relief swept over me as I put the phone down.
HELLO! HELLO!
When the home phone rings, and someone says,"Hi Mr.Surin, how's it going today?" I know at once that this is a call from a telemarketer. I try to be nice and polite before putting the phone down, because I know that at the other end of the line is a poor soul trying to make a living; I know, because I was that person too, if only for two weeks.
The company was trying to sell long distance phone services to clients in the USA, trying to switch them from their current service provider. The call centre that they put up was huge, it looked very impressive with hundreds of cubicles with hundreds of people working three shifts, talking into their headsets and peering at a computer screen that was divulging all kinds of information on the person being dialled. The company emphasised that their call list was a gold mine, that they had worked very hard to get hold of all that information, therefore, we the agents should make good and profitable use of the data. They put us through a whole week of training in how to sell a service that the prospective customer had never asked for, and in many cases never even heard of!
In my one week of real work, I sold only two accounts. I joined a bunch of poor performers for retraining, but this did not help. Once, a shaky, female and feeble voice at the other end said in a faltering way,"Excuse me, do you know what time it is here? We are all asleep.....this is a Seniors' home!" The computer had auto dialled a number in Florida, which was three hours ahead of us, and it was around 9 o'clock in the night here.
I felt bad and apologised. A couple of days later, after listening to my sales spiel, an arrogant voice from California rasped, "You sound like a damn terrorist to me". I cut the line and handed in my ID card to my supervisor and walked out the door.
Among other jobs that I tried was being a courier, a car jockey, a retail sales guy.....but none of these can really provide you with a steady income.
However, in all this madness, one small weekend job stands out like a beacon in the wilderness of frustrating part time work : I was a snowshoe guide at Mount Seymour.
Mount Seymour has provided me many days of hiking bliss, in all weathers, so when the opportunity arose to work as a weekend snow shoe guide, I took it up eagerly. Thankfully, by then I had a regular full time job, so the slightly-above- minimum wage did not really affect me that much. I could not believe that I was being paid to wander around snow shoe trails, talking to groups of people and showing them little secrets of the snow and the trees around! Sometimes the group would consist of only two or three people and it was more like taking friends around on a hike of discovery through the hushed winter forests. I met some wonderful folk and had a great time. This was truly working for the love of it!
Career advice gurus constantly harp on reinventing yourself and how the new economy requires that we go through a series of career changes in our working lives. They speak of transferable "soft skill sets" that will help us survive the new world that galloping technology and shifts in world trade are ushering in. They are right, but that doesn't make it any easier to look for work, especially if you are classified as a "mature worker" who might be set in his or her ways, and when insane numbers of people are chasing fewer and fewer opportunities.
Half an hour later, I was driving away from one of the loading docks, my old second or third hand (I was not sure, I had paid CAD$500 for it) Corsica sedan groaning with the considerable weight of Telus telephone directories stuffed into the trunk and the back seats and the passenger seat next to me. Armed with a map and a very rudimentary knowledge of the layout of the city, I drove out of the parking lot. I was in Burnaby and headed for Vancouver. Like any new immigrant, I was elated that I had found a job; well, not a real job, but work of some kind. My ability to make money would depend solely on how many telephone directories I could distribute on a particular day. My hopeful innocence was in for a shock.
I had been in Canada for barely a month. It was July 2001 and summer was slowly creeping in around the Lower Mainland, as the Greater Vancouver area is generally referred to. Thumbing through the city map kindly gifted to me by our friends Natala and Don Goodman from Seattle, I worked out the shortest route to the area I had been allotted.
It turned out to be a voyage of discovery. The Angus Drive locality of Vancouver tends to house some really wealthy people who live in beautiful houses with long driveways, security cameras scanning their automated gates. Why would these people need a telephone directory, I asked myself. For the most part the houses were empty, their well heeled residents holidaying in Europe or other parts of the globe. The only humans I met on these properties were Filipino caretakers. They were a cheerful lot, always had a smile for me and as I left the telephone books with them I couldn't help noticing that they drove better and more expensive cars than my beat up blue sedan!
After a couple of days of pounding the pavement in rain ( I was learning that in Vancouver it can rain at any time of the year!)and shine, I sat down to do the math. After crunching the numbers, I realised that I was wasting my time : I was making less than the minimum wage ($8/hr at that time) after factoring in the amount I spent on gas! I had seen the regular phone book distributors drive into the warehouse with delivery style vans of humongous capacity, dollies to carry large amounts of books at the same time, and the whole family being roped into the task! Ah, it all made sense now; they could probably deliver at four times the pace I could and their volumes translated into more dollars as the payment was proportionate to the number of books you delivered.
I had no regrets quitting that gig, though I must admit that the job gave me an insight into the social stratification of some parts of the city and therefore was a learning experience.
Thus began a series of experimentation on the job market front, some happy some not so happy, and some downright painful. I shall begin with two of my worst jobs, so I can end this post on a happy note.
THE TOTAL CON :
I had heard that selling a product was not an easy thing....but I had not realised just how low companies and people can sink to make a profit. My education was about to begin....
The company was in the business of selling vacuum cleaners door to door. They would call up people at random and ask if they would like to participate in an "air quality" survey. If they said yes, a bait would be thrown in at the conclusion of the telephone survey: we would like to thank you for your participation in this survey by giving you a small token of our appreciation; one of our staff will call on you to deliver this gift personally at a date and time which suits you!
Armed with this "gift" - in this case it was a set of kitchen knives - and the vacuum cleaner in the trunk of my car, I would ring the doorbell. Once having gained entry into the house, I had to sweet talk the victim into allowing me "just 15 minutes" to demonstrate a product that was guaranteed to improve the air quality in the house! Of course the demonstration would take approximately 45 minutes at the best of times.
Needless to say, the price points offered would vary with how much resistance I would encounter to the sale. At the highest level, it would nudge the $2000 mark....I know this sounds atrocious, but obviously my commission would be larger as I only had to pay a fixed amount back to the company. All kinds of payment options would be trotted out to ease the pain of parting with such a ridiculously large amount of money.
At the distress sale level, I could let go of the machine for only around $750. In my one week with the company, I sold only a couple of them. I met people in various stages of financial health : there was a single mom struggling to feed her kids, there was the retired couple who did not really need a vacuum cleaner as their current one worked perfectly. What really made me throw up this work happened late one night.
The prospective customer lived in a ramshackle old house. The yard was unkempt, the grass grew wild, a willow tree drooped over the shiny new cab of a semi. The family of four had finished their dinner, it was a cool summer night and I went over my spiel. Best value for the money, incredible and indestructible motor, awesome suction capabilities (one of the standard demos was to suck in a pile of sand weighing about 10 pounds, conveniently at hand as part of the demo kit!), lifetime warranty, etc. etc. The woman of the house watched from a distance. The man listened, intrigued by all the technical jargon I threw at him. I could tell that he was a gadget guy; he would love to add this new toy to his collection.
The haggling over the price began. This man wanted it, but at the lowest price. As per procedure, I excused myself and said, "I have to talk to my manager to approve this very very special price for you, sir!" I called the office and of course I did not really need approval, I only needed to enact the scenario.
I beamed at the man and said, "You are a very lucky man indeed, sir! My manager said he will make an exception in your case. The machine is yours!" I began to get the paperwork ready when the wife intervened.
"Can I talk to you privately, please?" she said.
We walked out into the cool night and stood in their little driveway.
"Do you see that big rig?" she pointed to the semi parked under the trees. "My husband bought that brand new recently, that is is livelihood, he is paying a huge sum of money every month on the loan that he took to buy it. He loves new toys and I can see he is very tempted to buy your vacuum cleaner. But please understand that, honestly, we cannot afford it. I manage the house and the groceries and I know how hard it is to put food on the table every single day so my family can eat. I'd like you to think about that."
I looked at the semi, its grille glinting in the moonlight filtering through the trees. Then I looked at the woman before me. Her face radiated stress, anxiety, worry. She was ageing before her time. There was no debate, I had made up my mind.
"Thank you for bringing this up, ma'am, I do understand your plight. Rest assured : your husband is not going to get this toy." I picked up the vacuum cleaner, thanked her for her time, wished her good night, and walked slowly back to my car.
The next day, I called up the company and told them that I was not the right fit for the position and would like to quit. A great sense of relief swept over me as I put the phone down.
HELLO! HELLO!
When the home phone rings, and someone says,"Hi Mr.Surin, how's it going today?" I know at once that this is a call from a telemarketer. I try to be nice and polite before putting the phone down, because I know that at the other end of the line is a poor soul trying to make a living; I know, because I was that person too, if only for two weeks.
The company was trying to sell long distance phone services to clients in the USA, trying to switch them from their current service provider. The call centre that they put up was huge, it looked very impressive with hundreds of cubicles with hundreds of people working three shifts, talking into their headsets and peering at a computer screen that was divulging all kinds of information on the person being dialled. The company emphasised that their call list was a gold mine, that they had worked very hard to get hold of all that information, therefore, we the agents should make good and profitable use of the data. They put us through a whole week of training in how to sell a service that the prospective customer had never asked for, and in many cases never even heard of!
In my one week of real work, I sold only two accounts. I joined a bunch of poor performers for retraining, but this did not help. Once, a shaky, female and feeble voice at the other end said in a faltering way,"Excuse me, do you know what time it is here? We are all asleep.....this is a Seniors' home!" The computer had auto dialled a number in Florida, which was three hours ahead of us, and it was around 9 o'clock in the night here.
I felt bad and apologised. A couple of days later, after listening to my sales spiel, an arrogant voice from California rasped, "You sound like a damn terrorist to me". I cut the line and handed in my ID card to my supervisor and walked out the door.
Among other jobs that I tried was being a courier, a car jockey, a retail sales guy.....but none of these can really provide you with a steady income.
However, in all this madness, one small weekend job stands out like a beacon in the wilderness of frustrating part time work : I was a snowshoe guide at Mount Seymour.
 |
| Goldie Lake : part of the Discovery snow shoe trail network at Mt. Seymour |
Mount Seymour has provided me many days of hiking bliss, in all weathers, so when the opportunity arose to work as a weekend snow shoe guide, I took it up eagerly. Thankfully, by then I had a regular full time job, so the slightly-above- minimum wage did not really affect me that much. I could not believe that I was being paid to wander around snow shoe trails, talking to groups of people and showing them little secrets of the snow and the trees around! Sometimes the group would consist of only two or three people and it was more like taking friends around on a hike of discovery through the hushed winter forests. I met some wonderful folk and had a great time. This was truly working for the love of it!
 |
| Snow shoe trail to Dog Mountain on Mt. Seymour. |
Career advice gurus constantly harp on reinventing yourself and how the new economy requires that we go through a series of career changes in our working lives. They speak of transferable "soft skill sets" that will help us survive the new world that galloping technology and shifts in world trade are ushering in. They are right, but that doesn't make it any easier to look for work, especially if you are classified as a "mature worker" who might be set in his or her ways, and when insane numbers of people are chasing fewer and fewer opportunities.
