I’ve only been at this job for about a month, which is the main problem I’m having ‘cause my life is ruled by the sunk cost fallacy I guess. Most of my jobs have been through my university so they worked with my schedule and had a definitive beginning and end, aside from one shitty overstock store job where they hired me for a management position with no prior experience and then didn’t bother to train me. But even that one (while still a horrible experience to put in my notice) had to end because I was moving.
This one I’m just quitting because I hate it so much and that feels like a failure.
I work in sales but the type where you go into peoples houses to demo something for them and then immediately try to pressure them into buying which I fucking hate. I am NOT a pushy person and I respect everyone’s choices, I’m not gonna try to force people to make a 40k+ decision after a like… hour long presentation. And I was misled throughout much of the hiring and “training” process about how much pressure was going to be involved.
Anyways, they hired me on the spot which, in my limited job force experience, I didn’t realize was a bad fucking red flag. The guy assured me that the training was the hardest part of the job and I repeatedly said “Good!! That’s what I want, I really want to be thoroughly trained so I can do this effectively!” Turns out this “incredibly hard training period” was literally like… two or three essentially 15 minute long zoom sessions where I was just run through the script while he gave me memorization tips. Dude, if you would fucking glance at my resume you would know that most of my experience is in theatre. You should realize I am at least passable at memorization. The whole week was just more of that with like… one day directly before I “graduated” the training course dedicated to the actual work/pre inspection I had to do of Clients’ houses with absolutely no time devoted to what I even had to do if the fucking client wanted to buy the product in the end??? I barely got 20 minutes worth of an explanation on that the Monday after I “graduated” and the guy who trained me explained that he had been fucking promoted in the middle of training me and that’s why we almost never really trained. Ok fine sorry you’re busy but I still need to know these things? How can you confidently send out someone who knows about 60% of what it is they’re supposed to be doing at these strangers’ houses??? Anyways, he said he would take me on a ride-along. I said great, I would love that. Guess what has never happened? I fucked up my second meeting and my then-supervisor said she was going to do a couple zoom classes with me to teach me the right way to do whatever it was I fucked up. Guess what has never happened?
Forgot to mention, this was advertised as remote and would be within a certain amount of miles from my home so it wouldn’t be too much driving. My meetings have been consistently 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours away and they have yet to send me the gas card I was promised, so I’m driving to strangers’ houses 2:30 hours away on my own dime to demo something I don’t know enough about to be confident in because the only “training tools” we have is the fucking script.
And I don’t want to bring my appearance into this but it is a factor. I look very stereotypically feminine- I have long hair, big knockers, I’m short, and I look even younger than I am, which is already young (early to mid 20’s). It doesn’t help that I’m an anxious, pathetic little pushover (which I’m trying to fix but it’s slow going, I’ve been incredibly passive my whole life and it’s hard to stop being that way overnight). I feel very unsafe going into random houses in the middle of backwoods Appalachia, hours from my home, with no backup/someone with me. The first meeting I had I had zero service on my phone and was left alone with a man probably in his 60s. He was an avid hunter by the looks of it and was built like an old-timey wrestler. He was very nice and understanding of my nerves, but it felt a little too earnest. When you deal with that kind of attention often, you just kind of get to recognize it. His situation was also abnormal, something I wasn’t at all prepared for and apparently neither was my supervisor, which only added to my nerves. I was told we had to give our personal number to clients (which I’m learning might actually be completely false, what the fuck man) and this man has contacted me several times since asking if I would go out to lunch with him. I don’t want to assume this guy has nefarious intentions but I feel extreeeeemely uncomfortable with this.
Also I was so nervous I literally puked right in front of this guy on his driveway. He gave me a hug with puke still in my hair. Ew.
But that’s the main thing, probably. The way this job is fucking up my mental health. They added a surprise meeting at a house 2:15 hours away at 6 pm tomorrow night and it has me feeling like my only recourse is to blow my brains out so I don’t have to go tomorrow. My last job sucked so, so many asses but I could handle it, because I had a definitive schedule and, after a lot of trial and error, I knew what I was doing (when the managers actually let me do my job instead of sticking me on register with no one else up there because they never fucking scheduled cashiers and even though that wasn’t my fucking job… anyways). With this I’m basically on call 24/6 and I have to drive a dick year to do something I’m not confident with and don’t feel safe doing.
Plus base pay is like… 300 a week not counting taxes and while that’s alright in my situation if I only have one meeting a week but I have three this week and I know I won’t make commissions because I don’t feel confident I can sell this shit!!! Fuck!!!!!
Anyways, I don’t know why I typed this all out. Idk if I’m just hoping you guys will validate my opinions, or if you’ll tell me how to quit (Which I’m not even sure how to do because there have been so many promotions that I don’t even know for sure who I should contact) Idk if you’ll tell me I’m spoiled or entitled or should just suck it up because I’m lucky to have a job anyway, which is what I’m feeling deep down and probably why I have so much guilt over this. Just… if you’ve read this far, thank you. Send out some good vibes so that I’m not kidnapped and sex trafficked before I get the courage to quit this stupid fucking job.