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Antiwork

Extended Lunch

This happened years ago but still warms my heart. I was in community college, living at home, supported by parents and odd jobs. Major family crisis meant dropping out and getting any job to help. Found one doing (please don't hate me) telephone collections. Turns out when a person's world falls apart it puts them in a perfect mindset for that job. I was freaking good at it. Probably because my life sucked so bad I couldn't find empathy? That's a whole different discussion. The job is a real soul-sucker to start with, and this place had one of those Glengarry Glen Ross tote boards for your monthly quota and daily totals. Split shift on Thursdays so you could catch people in the evening; just nasty. For whatever reason, I was successful. A competing agency tried to poach me with a better offer and like a good clone I reported…


This happened years ago but still warms my heart.

I was in community college, living at home, supported by parents and odd jobs. Major family crisis meant dropping out and getting any job to help. Found one doing (please don't hate me) telephone collections. Turns out when a person's world falls apart it puts them in a perfect mindset for that job. I was freaking good at it. Probably because my life sucked so bad I couldn't find empathy? That's a whole different discussion.

The job is a real soul-sucker to start with, and this place had one of those Glengarry Glen Ross tote boards for your monthly quota and daily totals. Split shift on Thursdays so you could catch people in the evening; just nasty. For whatever reason, I was successful. A competing agency tried to poach me with a better offer and like a good clone I reported it to my boss, figuring hE wOuLD rEwaRd mE. What he did was get the other agency on the phone in front of me and ream the guy out. “That'll show him” he actually said. Sent me back to work.

That was the tipping point for me; I realized I was on my way to being that nasty prick and there were much better options for me. Made a few long distance calls to friends, drank coffee and grab-assed 'til lunchtime, then went home. He called me about 3 pm to freak out, I just hung up. Not sure if I ever felt better than quitting that job, money never meant less to me than at that point in time. No ragrets, as they say.

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