I (20M) work at a local gym in my city. This gym is a small chain in the NorCal region, but I will not be naming it for privacy sake. I initially was a janitor, but due to my demeanor (or so my boss said), I was offered a sales potion back in mid-September after having only worked as a janitor for 2 weeks, at the beginning of the same month. That month is also when the new manager arrived.
Now, this manager doubles as both manager, and a salesperson. He is quite good at his job, and I, being fresh into my new position, sought to learn from him. However, he turned out to be much more “hands off;” he’d taught me the basics, but essentially would laugh whenever I tried my best at calling prospects or giving tours to potential customers; instead of helping me, or making calls himself, he leaves the room, goes to our break room, and FaceTimes his girlfriend. The only time he leaves is when our Regional Manager (RM) is there to visit once a week. The one time the RM caught me on my phone (I was slacking, I will admit), I was formally written up BY MY MANAGER, who had never cared about phone use until that point. The next day, he simply told me to “listen for the door” the next time the RM comes in. I should probably mention that my manager and RM have worked at other locations previously, and also are interwoven in each other’s personal and familial lives outside of work, so that MAY be why he made an example of me that day.
I have to mention that at our establishment, we have a quota: 20 sales, minimum, for each salesperson (with commission, but commission is only granted if such a goal is met, due to the “incentive” to get to 20 sales). I had heard from previous employees that he “didn’t like to share,” but boy was that an understatement! Any person that comes in, HE gets to show around, even if I was the one to make an appointment with them over the phone. The only time I’m allowed walk-ins or my own appointments is when he’s on his lunch break, or has gone home for the day. While I can sell memberships, I am not allowed to sell “add-ons,” whereby someone adds on an additional person to their gym membership (for a fee, of course). I have asked him I could somehow be granted permissions on my sales account to do so, but since it’s related to “contract additions,” only management has permission to do so; add-ons also count towards commission, so that definitely helps.
Finally, there’s the notion of prospect calls. My regional manager has been on me about reaching out to gym-goers’ family members and friends to get more traction in our establishment. This means giving out passes to people, getting peoples’ names and numbers, calling people, etc. There is a quota for 30 calls a day, but my regional manager has made sure to tell me that I need to go beyond such. Now, this wouldn’t be a big deal, but after awhile, there’s only so many people I can call that are in the system, leading to calling people back that I know very well didn’t pick up in the last 5 days, so why would they today? While referrals help, there’s only so many gym members who you can get referrals from before they state that they “can’t think of anyone right now,” which is understandable. My manager almost never hands out passes to get referrals, and often inputs fake names and numbers into the computer to make it look like he did for the day. Then I, trying to look busy so I don’t get written up again, pointlessly call the number, and mark it for my calls for the day.
I feel trapped. On one hand, it’s easy money: I work 8 hours a day (9 hours total, with 1 hour unpaid lunch break; I don’t mind it much, as my last restaurant job didn’t even have formal breaks, so this is miles better); even if I don’t make commission, I still make decent money (15.50/hour where I live). On the other hand: it’s demoralizing having to know that my job is near pointless, that I’m being walked all over, and I can’t speak up about it due to the aforementioned friendship ties between my manager and the RM.
I want to leave, but a part of me is telling me that I’d be a wuss for not tolerating my first “real job.” Any advice?