It was May of 2018, a full year after I graduated college. I was still working part-time at my first job at a regional grocery store chain, where I had been working for four years at that point. And over the past year, I was applying for full-time work anywhere and everywhere where I could possibly use my degree in English, use the skills I got during my time at the grocery store, and could be seen as a “real job”.
Eventually after scouring LinkedIn for so long, I stumbled upon a “Full-Time Customer Experience Associate” position for a company based in a city about 20 miles (32 km) away called Mockingbird Executives. I checked the details of the job description and thought they were a good match for what I was looking for. I then checked Indeed and Glassdoor and saw that there were none on Indeed and only a few five-star ones on Glassdoor, so I thought it would be a good idea to apply (this should have been the first red flag). I clicked the Easy Apply button and called it a day.
The next day, I received an email from HR asking me for a phone interview. We scheduled it, had it, and it went well. A few days later, I went to their office for the in-person interview. The first floor looked nice but the floor they were on looked dingy and unfinished (this should have been the second red flag). They sat me in the small HR office with the woman whom I interviewed with over the phone and seven other candidates. They eventually split us up into groups where we would have interviews with our supervisors on the job. My supervisor took myself and two others to the grocery store across the street to have the interview (this should have been the third red flag). Yet despite their appearance so far, I was there to get a full-time job and nothing was going to stop me.
And that’s what happened the next day. The supervisor called me and offer me the job, which I gladly accepted. I thought I was finally in the clear, that after searching for so long I was finally going to have that full-time I was so desperately looking for. So I put in my two-weeks notice at my grocery store job and said my final goodbyes to everyone I was working with.
The following Monday morning, I dressed in a suit and tie as required and drove down to the office excited to start my first “real job”. All 30 people working at Mockingbird met up together in this small empty room with turquoise carpeting, two whiteboards on corner walls, and windows draped around the other side. A small radio in the corner was blasting not-so-family-friendly music so loudly I could barely hear myself think (this should have been the fourth red flag).
Soon, the CEO came in and gave us a speech introducing himself and the company he “founded”. And during the speech, he touched on the topic of “J.U.I.C.E.”. For those of you who don’t know, J.U.I.C.E. stands for Join Us In Creating Excitement. I didn’t know it at the time, but this is a common dog whistle among Devilcorps. It’s used for corporate bonding in ways which border on cult-like and this was no different here (this should have been the fifth red flag).
After the speech, we all split up into small groups with our supervisors where we would learn “sales skills” (I was looking for a customer service job, so this should have been the sixth red flag). And what were we selling, and where, and to whom? Well, I found that out when we were all told we would be leaving the office to go out into “the field”. We all grabbed iPads and makeshift table sets with cloths emblazoned with the Xfinity logo, and we drove to an assigned Walmart or Best Buy location in the state. And in these locations, we would sign a clipboard at the customer service desk, set up in a junction in the electronics department, and attempt to stop customers who are shopping to get them to switch their cable and internet provider to Xfinity (this should have been the seventh red flag).
And so, that’s what the job consisted of. Dress in a suit and tie, drive to the office, J.U.I.C.E., “sales skills”, drive to whatever store was assigned that day, sell Xfinity to shoppers who just want to be left alone for an entire afternoon, drive back to the office to recap the day, and drive home and get ready to do it all again the next day. A typical day would go from 9am to 7pm and you had to work Monday through Friday. They said Saturdays were optional and simply to help people who were falling behind get more sales, but you would have to go in anyway even if you were the best salesperson in the entire company.
Naturally, I struggled. I wasn’t getting any sales. I thought I finally found my niche by rebundling existing customers with plans that would help them keep their existing services and pay a lower price, but I was told that would not earn me any money. They said the only ways to earn money were to either convert new customers to Xfinity or upsell new services to existing customers (this should have been the eighth red flag). And over my time at the company, the rose-colored sparkle in my eyes faded into a dull gray. What was I doing with my life, I wondered. Why did I take this job? Is this what a “real job” is like?
The job lasted eight days, Monday to Monday, before I was let go by my supervisor one day before my 23rd birthday. Naturally, I was devastated. I had never been let go from a job before, and with nothing lined up I figured there was only one thing to do: go to the grocery store and ask for my old job back. And fortunately, they took me back the next morning, no strings attached. At least at that point, I knew I survived. I stayed at that grocery store for another four years until quitting for good back in early February of this year.
And to put the icing on the cake, out of 70 hours worked for Mockingbird, I made a grand total of $20 in cash, under the table, and that was only because I haggled my supervisor for promised mileage reimbursement. I know the grocery store only paid me a few cents above minimum wage, but that was certainly a lot more than this “job” paid me. Also, this remains the only job LinkedIn got me to this day.
In case you’re wondering, I’m much better off now. I’m training for a customer service call center job at a regional health insurance company and everything has been going well so far. And unlike the “job” I was writing about, I’m actually getting paid pretty well here. I just know that I’m at the point in my life where I can put this “job” behind me and share my story with all of you.
If there’s one thing you should take away from my story, it’s this:
Don’t deal with the Devil (corp).