Sorry for long ramble. I'm currently recovering from a burnout, which means I was first put on sick leave and now I am back to working 75% of the time. Before I was put on sick leave I was interviewed for a role which was presented to me as “Support analyst business to business”. During my interviews, it was characterized as just supporting businesses via e-mail and few calls if needed, and at no point do I remember sales being the role.
I passed the interview and got a promotion, but as I then went on sick leave the join date was postponed by over a month. Eventually they asked me to join the project even if I would not be full-time, but as soon as I joined the training I realized that it was not support – my title became Insider Sales Associate.
I asked my hiring manager as soon as I realized and they told me, paraphrased, “It's sales, I told you it was sales oriented but I apologize if you misunderstood it” and said I could have asked several times and months in advance about this role before I joined my trainings. The issue is I never would have expected it to be sales in the first place as my old role was business to business support too. They think it would be the best role for me to “grow and develop myself in” on a sales path and that I'm too valuable to be let off the project. I have no aspirations for a sales path, ever.
So I talked with my own manager and they said, point blank, “We can't pull you from the project because it would look bad on the other manager with how many strings they pulled, and it would severely impact your chances of getting a new project, sorry for that, it's just how offices are. I understand it's frustrating but nothing I can do.”.
Here's the issue. The new role is almost fully reliant on me doing cold and warm calls with an expectation of 30 calls a day alongside 6 meetings with customers. Minus the e-mails. I have bad auditory processing disorder and speaking on the phone is almost impossible for me, especially if I am supposed to be the person of authority. I simply don't hear or understand what the other person is saying. I've tried it all, therapy, meds, training; I still don't understand and end up talking fast or mumbling through it all. It was a huge contributor to my burnout, being yelled at by customers for not understanding them but also for not making my call quota (due to being overworked).
I mentioned several times to my own manager I would prefer a non-customer orientated role and have started taking up trainings on my own to slowly phase out into a more back-end, more technical role which would require less outreach. When I mentioned this to the other manager they simply told me “Yeah but I don't think you have those skills”.
What are my options here? I assume just leave. So how f-cked am I? My salary is now “average” due to my promotion and most other places I've seen offer less salary than what I have now for an “entry” (2-4 years exp) role. I hold a BA but my “official” working history is basically non-existent minus this job place. The technical field I would like to go into requires usually a compsci degree and after sending hundreds of CV's with no reply I'm super anxious.