This happened when I was 18 and desperate to get out of hospitality and still makes me mad to this day.
I was applying for any and all jobs advertised that were office-based, admin or sales, and entry level as I had no experience. I interviewed for a marketing company, I’d checked out the company’s website prior and it seemed like they were specialist contractors providing marketing, advertising to off-site companies. Cool, I’m a quick learner, I can pick that up.
The manager seemed to like me in the interview, and a couple of days later I was invited to spend a day working with them to see if I was a good fit. Knowing what I know now, I would never give any of my time to any company if it was unpaid, but at the time I really wanted a good job.
Well, I arrived at the office and was told the sales staff were getting ready to go to a client meeting in a town across the river. I knew the town didn’t have many businesses, maybe a pub, a general store, I don’t know the area very well but I thought it was odd we were having a client meeting in such a strange area.
Me and a couple of other hopeful candidates hopped in the sales person’s car and headed across the river. We stopped at a gas station where they advised us to pick up some lunch, so I just grabbed a yoghurt because I don’t generally trust ‘fresh’ gas station food, and kept on our way. When we got to the town, we parked on a random residential street and were told to leave our stuff in the car (our food, in Australia, in summer) and the sales guys went around to the boot and put charity branded shirts on over their normal shirts.
I still had no idea what was going on until we started going into peoples yards, knocking on their doors, and hassling them to sign up for monthly direct debits. It was one of the worst days of my life. I was dressed in business attire, I’m pretty tall so I wasn’t wearing heels, but I wasn’t wearing walking shoes either and ended up with blisters. It was hot, the residents were understandably rude, and we didn’t make one sale. Residents were happy to make one-off payments, but we couldn’t accept those, only subscriptions.
As the day went on I got angrier and angrier, and it culminated in me sneakily texting my mother to call me with a fake emergency. I’d given it a good 6 hours (11am-5pm) and there was no end in sight, and I knew this wasn’t the work I wanted to be doing, so after my emergency phone call I called a cab back to the city where I’d parked my car, which cost $50. I LOST money that day.
I was lied to and taken advantage of and wasted a whole day of my time where I could have been applying for other jobs, going to interviews, or working at my actual job that I hated. And I never saw my yoghurt again.
Ever since then, though, I got the courage to ask EXACTLY what the job I’m applying for entailed, I stood firm when it came to unpaid work, and I knew not to apply for jobs that had terms like “Sales Superstar”, and “We work hard, but we also play hard” in the description.