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Day 2, Phone Survey Boogaloo
Oct. 20th, 2010 11:33 pmI was feeling a bit down before work today. I think I was mainly worried about finding a Saturday substitute at KRCC over the next few weeks (I found one for next week; still looking for one this week.) I was also worried about not being good enough for the job, but I didn't do too shabby. I found 35 people willing to take the surveys I was assigned out of roughly 400 people I called. Roughly half of the calls went to answering machines. The surveys were for elections in Virginia, New Jersey and California.
Most of the callers who didn't want to participate were polite. A small number of the New Jersey callers were legitimately upset since our calls lasted until shortly past 9 PM Eastern. At that point, we switched to the San Francisco area where it was only 6 PM (Those calls stopped just before 9 PM Pacific.) Some of the angry callers had been previously contacted a few times by the company and asked to have their numbers removed from the calling list. Apparently the previous operators forgot to enter the code for "remove/angry refusal." Others were mad because they were either having dinner or trying to watch the Giants game.
The late-night dialing reminded me of a Garry Shandling joke where he says he keeps forgetting the phone number to dial the time. He found out you can get the time from any number if you call it late enough:
My worries went away after an hour or so of decent accepted vs. rejected call volume. I think I might even enjoy this job the more I do it. The money is certainly a motivating factor. I need to bring my cell phone and maybe a book or puzzle magazine to work to kill time during breaks. I'm not allowed to have the cellphone out or on at my cubicle (I'll keep it in the bag containing my lunch and extra water,) but it would be nice to Web surf during breaks and/or make any important calls.
Most of the callers who didn't want to participate were polite. A small number of the New Jersey callers were legitimately upset since our calls lasted until shortly past 9 PM Eastern. At that point, we switched to the San Francisco area where it was only 6 PM (Those calls stopped just before 9 PM Pacific.) Some of the angry callers had been previously contacted a few times by the company and asked to have their numbers removed from the calling list. Apparently the previous operators forgot to enter the code for "remove/angry refusal." Others were mad because they were either having dinner or trying to watch the Giants game.
The late-night dialing reminded me of a Garry Shandling joke where he says he keeps forgetting the phone number to dial the time. He found out you can get the time from any number if you call it late enough:
"Hi, is Steve there?"
"It's 2:30 in the morning!"
"Thank you very much!"
"It's 2:30 in the morning!"
"Thank you very much!"
My worries went away after an hour or so of decent accepted vs. rejected call volume. I think I might even enjoy this job the more I do it. The money is certainly a motivating factor. I need to bring my cell phone and maybe a book or puzzle magazine to work to kill time during breaks. I'm not allowed to have the cellphone out or on at my cubicle (I'll keep it in the bag containing my lunch and extra water,) but it would be nice to Web surf during breaks and/or make any important calls.
