My So-called Career

Let me tell you a little something about the company I work for (I'll not go as far as to tell you their name - something tells me they would frown on that).

First, I'm in telesales. Stop hissing, dammit. I have to earn a living, and these days four years of university is worth about as much as a Learn Direct typing course. Maybe less.

At the moment I'm selling subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal. Last week I was hocking appointments for an IT solutions company. Week before that it was electricity. Anyway, the European edition of the Journal is printed in Brussels, Belgium. And so, with the creative vision typical to my company, we are now calling the Belgians.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the Belgians, they speak several languages - Dutch in the north, French in the south, and German in the far east. I speak none of these. I'm English. We don't bother to learn a second language. We just pre-empted the language barrier in days of yore and colonised the world to make sure that everyone spoke our language.

I'm sure you can imagine that this presents a problem. Telesales is hard. How many times have you slammed the phone down on one of us (sorry about calling during dinnertime, by the way)? So if selling a newspaper (at a cost of over £200 a year) in English is hard, imagine how mind-blowingly impossible it would be to sell to someone who only knows enough English to introduce themselves and comment on the weather.

Don't think that there aren't advantages, though. The first is that the French PA's I speak to have accents that would arouse a dead man. The second is that there is a really, really (and I mean really) good-looking girl working on the campaign with me. There's something about a pretty face that can brighten the darkest day.

So, despite the stupid tasks, I occasionally enjoy it. What about your jobs? Worse or better?