Monsterbox

Confirmation, yes there will be a new blog and yes it will be at Blog-City.com The site is up and will officially launch on January First at the exact address of

www.freemonster.wordpress.com

If the address is too hard to remember, bookmark it by hitting CTRL+D. Or just join the mailing list, which is pretty easy to do, there's a button on the left. And you should recieve alerts every time there's a new post there just as you would for here.

As far as special interests are concerned:
Connie, if the font is too small, just tell me and I'll make it bigger for you...
In regards to comments, the comment option is completely open, no membership to Blog-City is required. (And I will still be dropping comments around using my blogstream account now and then [[EMOTICON:WINK1]] )
Thanks Guys, you are all the greatest. :P

I am removing this blog and all my other blogs. That is to say that they will become inactive, which... they already seem to be, and create a bundled new one starting the beginning of the year. It will be hosted by Blog-City and will more than likely maintain the name 'monsterbox' just like always.

Thanks y'all.

I have decided that working as a telemarketer, is a sin. That is all.

Today we were in the training classroom only for a short time. And the only time that we spent in there was learning about dress code (which is very loose because no client ever sees us) and codes of conduct (all the basics- don't swear at customers, don't swear at coworkers, and don't grab each other in inapropriate places... while you're on the sales floor.) The general word was that no one cares remotely here. e what you do on your free time, just don't bring it to work. I was told to feel absolutely free to smoke weed, grope whoever and whatever I want, as long as no one can claim it happened here.

Then we also discussed the payment system. Which is where all the tired eyes and sleepy trainees tired of hearing about the same old nonsense over and over again, perked up and paid attention. This... this is crazy. It starts with the absurd and just works its way up from there. We get a monthy bonus for showing up when we're scheduled. ... And everyone is like- are you sure? Sure enough, we can get huge bonuses just for being at work 90% of the time we're supposed to be there. And if we're there 95% of the time, the bonus goes up. If we're there 100% of the time, it gets crazy. These people are screwballed. Base pay is $8 per hour. After 150 hours in a month, add 5 per hour. If you sell like a dynamo, add $12 an hour. If you're working overtime- multiply that by one and a half. That's a possible $32.50 per HOUR. BEFORE the attendance bonus. If you sell well. And ladies and gentlemen- I sell well. I have that gift, I speak and people buy things like I'm using a jedi mind trick. It's crazy. Plus! They let you have as much overtime as you want. Need a little extra cash? Just walk into work whenever. No one cares if you show up and log in and log some more hours of selling. Just... do it.

So I will be making some money. The remainder of the day we went to the actual sales floor with a headset and jacked into the phones alongside another marketer (also known as 'agents') so we could listen to a marketer sell (or try to). The first guy I talked to, the first agent anyhow- told me that basically we try to trick the customer into buying by saying the word 'difference'. You have your phone service, and the sales call is to try to add something to that bill. And often it takes the bill up by about $5. So you talk, add the whole thing up for them, and tell them that it should be a difference of about $5 on your bill. Saying the word 'difference' makes the customer think subtraction. Which in turn makes them think that they're bill is going down. A lot of customers ask what the bill will be following the change just to make sure, which is when the seedy telemarketer tells them that they're originally paying $45 per month, and the new bill will be only $40 a month plus tax. Which is true. But look here. Tax on the phone line is about ten dollars. The $45 included that tax. The $40 following did not. SO add that tax back in there and their bill goes up to $50 a month. A difference of $5, but PLUS five dollars.

This did not sit well with me. I do not like to lie to people and I will not do it. They argued that you're never actually lying, you're not allowed to lie. Great. I do not like to decieve people. And I will not do it. And I told them that. I'll make sales without that crap. Eventually. 90% of the calls that you make actually end in "F@#& you!" CLICK. The end. And thats just after hello.

I'll make it happen. This is what I do. More updates undoubtedly coming for tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Today was the first day on the new job. I was late. And I hate being late. I don't what happened. The alarm went off, I woke up, turned off the alarm... something- I don't know. The next thing I know I wake up and its almost an hour past 8. Out of all the pet peeves a person can have- I have only one. It's being late to stuff I'm expected to attend. I hate being late.

So basically I ran.

I arrived while the class was on a smoke break. Thank God, saved the trouble of walking in on a room full of people. They got me signed in and settled. And in a terrific stroke of luck- I wasn't the last to arrive. Three more people came in the door almost right behind me. Apparently there was some confusion as to when the training actually began. Several people were told many different things so it ended up looking a lot better than it was. Whew!

I'm on lunch break right now. It's noon and everyone is out eating. I'm blogging. I took the opportunity to head right across the street in my junk car to an auto chop to ask about the possibility of breaking the horn out and smashing it into little pieces. Something I'd have done long ago if I had any idea where my horn is located. So basically I went into the shop to ask where my own car horn is. I have no problem admitting I'm ignorant if it gets me what I need. That whole- 'men not asking directions' thing? I do not have that. I will ask, drive in a circle, and ask again. The reason I wanted my horn removed is because every so often (more often than not) my car horn will honk itself. Mostly on left turns. The little guy gets excited and lets it loose. No reason, and I have to beat the living daylights out of it to get it to stop.

So far I've learned lots of interesting sutff about this new job. Mostly I'll be promoting Bellsouth services. Long distance, high speed internet, extra features. Junk like that. I never finished the story about the car did I? I pulled into the auto shop and it honked itself twice before I could park. I went in and asked what I had been fully prepared to ask. So now my car horn is disconnected and completely inoperable and I tell you it is almost CREEPY driving around without a random outburst from beneath my hood.

Went back into training, learned a lot of nonsense that I'm rather sure we'll never actually use. The gist of which was never to steal or misuse customer information and don't piss off the IT Tech guys. And it took three hours to say that. Then we tourned the floor. There are several sections, I think seven, three of these are completely devoted to Bellsouth. My campaign. I'm the branch that sells long distance. There is the customer service branch, the DSL branch...

I mean before we're in this little room doing the training thing and it looks just like the computer room in a high school. We all get out little chairs and we talk presentations and yeah, have a smoke break thrice an hour. Why? God knows... how many cigarrettes can you smoke? On one of the breaks, some of the new guys with some sales experience started talking strategy. One fellow had an interesting idea.

"My goal is to make them feel guilty for not buying."
"Yeah." Some guy chimes in. "You'll be like- 'Do you realize that my children will not eat if you don't buy this service?"
"Ma'am you have to buy this. Or millions will die!"
"Dude, you're going to raise suicide rates across the west coast."

This and many other sales strategies were voiced, one such fellow who had formerly been a car salesman piped in. "It's simple, all you have to do is just not even listen to a word they say and keep talking till they agree with you. That's what you do in the car industry. You just keep telling them they're going to buy it till they do."

Thank you. You're the reason everyone hates telemarketers and car salesmen. Please go die.

This job is the social center of the universe. When we got to the sales floor and there are computers everywhere, and phones and headsets and people people people... Imagine an environment comprised of 400 employees who's only job requirement is to communicate. Bingo... so I'm basically back in highschool and getting paid for it, about darn time. Everyone knows everyone else and everyone has dirt on everybody. It, is, madness. So I think I'm going to keep my mouth shut and just... listen. And sell, a lot, of stuff.

I get paid more if I sell a lot of stuff. ;) Plus if I don't want to get swarmed in a mass political/social blood fued, I'd probably better keep focused on my job. Eh, I'm a better listener anyway. In fact I think that will probably become one of the more enjoyable parts of this blog, me, passing to you, the things that I hear. For instance, today in the training room- There is a fat guy sitting next to this skinny girl and she leans forward and scratches her back. The large fellow next to her notices and says- "That's cool... You're like, I'll bet you can just scratch every part of your back wherever you want to."
"Uh... yeah, I guess so."
"Yeah-" He scratches the back of his neck. "I used to be able to do that. That's cool."

I go in again tomorrow early. I'll most definitely have more to report at that time. This is... wow. Going to be interesting.

Yes. It is true... I am fired. Best Buy has given me the boot. And I deserved it. Or so the story from corporate goes. I was terminated on ethical grounds pertaining to the customer rewards program Reward Zone on October the seventh, two thousand and six... The day was an... interesting day. I was working that day. Which didn't need to happen by the way. The day that I sold the reward zone tickets, the event that would eventually lead to my termination- was several days prior. It was all very complicated and not worth recounting. Basically I wrote up a statement and they faxed it to corporate Best Buy, then told me not to come back for a few days. I came back anyway because I knew that if I didn't, I'd get more people mad at me because someone would not have passed on the memo that I might be fired, there would only be one person opening the store in my department and they'd get slammed with customers and then... well then they'd hate me for doing what I was told and not showing up. So I showed up. It was a good thing because when I walked in there the first thing I see is Dave on the phone trying to call me to tell me to come in.

I think I've said all this before... We skip ahead now to the part on saturday, when corporate returned the fax. It was a truly horrible day by the way. That morning my laptop crashed hard-core and completely died. Then I went into work, gave it to the geeksquad guys to fix it, they took it, and I got on the clock. I hadn't eaten and I had a long shift. So I was getting just a little hungry. ... A lot. The ironic thing was that there were catered ribs and barbecue in the breakroom as a part of the celebration that we completely rocked last month and made number one in the department. 12 in ONE! YEAH! Half my coworkers keep mysteriously dissapearing into that room and I run the floor till they get back. When they get back we get totally plastered, Customer Madhouse. FOr two hours. I get off the clock in about an hour, we finally slow down, I'm starving to death and I tell the guys- "Hey, I'm taking my lunch break." I tab out for my lunch break, half an hour, and I go back to the breakroom. The place is loaded with food. Oh... YES...

I gather a plate and start piling stuff onto it. When I've got it all there and forks and napkins and sauce and all of it, I set down to eat and the intercom rings and tells <caleb to admin please, caleb to admin> I nearly laughed. I get up from my plate, leaving it where it is, knowing it will be there when I return. I get to the admin office, step inside and someone closes the door behind me.

...

A few minutes pass and I step out a bit more shaken than I was when I walked in... A solid month and a half of working 15 hour days, barely sleeping, hardly eating, and gritting through it all suddenly caught up to me like the wave overtaking a ship and I suddenly realized how very tired I was. They told me to just... go home. I was on lunch break so there was no need to clock off. Just go.

I went. I walked out to the car, stood beside it for a few seconds. Just standing there, knowing. Because I saw that the window was up when I walked up to it. I knew I was locked out. I tried the handle anyway.

Yep... locked.

So I walked up the road three or four blocks to Hardees. I keep a coat hanger there. Just in case. Fortunately the weather has been cooling up a bit, so it wasn't so bad a walk. Then I turned around and jogged back. Stuck that coat hanger in the car door, got the car open in about four seconds- grabbed the ey, rolled the window down, sat down... and got back up and started walking back into Best Buy.

The GeekSquad still had my computer.

I went in and went to the counter and asked. It had been in the service center for nearly six hours and I'd almost entirely forgotten about it. They told me the hard drive was entirely toast. There was nothing they could do barring an $800 data recovery attempt. And even that might fail. So basically everything was gone. Three years of writing, two years of special projects in rpg maker, sketchup, powerpoint, and intensive C# code programming. Gone. I had the documents backed up to a certain date, about two weeks ago, the rest of it... I'll never see it again. I left the computer there. They said they'd reinstall the operating system, replace the hard drive, and do some basic diagnostics. Great.

I went home.

Now- as bad a day as that was: the entire situation really is less sour than it could be. For instance- there are several other business positions opening at the hospital nearby, good jobs that pay well. I could also become a telemarketer... Above that, when I finally got the computer back, turns out they couldn't find a 100gb HD to replace it with, so they upgraded me to a 120gb. Free storage space. I have resources, and marketable skills, and nearly every supervisor told me they'd be more than happy to be my best reference on an application. So there is some good that cames from that as well.

There is a lot I could say about the particulars of that event, the day, the job, the loss and all the drama drama drama that could come of it but won't. What this article is really about is my status at Best Buy- right now. You see, shortly after my termination, several rather unusual things began to reveal themselves. For instance, when the GeekSquad finished my computer- they installed several anti-virus and anti-spyware applications and generally cleaned it up for me. I gave them the okay to run that service charge. When I get the machine back and pay for the extra service, I notice it's quite a bit lower than normal cost for these things. I would know, I sold these things like a dynamo for a month and a half. When I ask to see what's up, the guy at the desk laughs and tells me "Employee discount, man." As if I should know this. I check the receipt. Sure enough, he'd run it through as employee, used my number, and it went through without a hitch. He hadn't been told I was no gone.

My employee discount is still active. On this date, it has been a full week since my termination and I purchased something there just today, and it still registers. Why.

Ready for this? I'm still on lunch.

According to Best Buy's internal employee tracking system, I never legitimately clocked off. I just went on lunch. At current status, that system quotes me as having been on my lunch break for seven days, four hours, and twelve minutes at least. Which is one doozy of a lunch break. Doing some research, it takes Best Buy's system at least a month to completely remove an employee from the system. At the end of that time, I will be completely expelled and the discount, at least in my understanding, will no longer work. I have a month to buy everything really really cheap.

Talking to those at Best Buy, each and every employee I have asked has told me- buy everything I can while I can, now don't tell anyone I said that- but do it. I mean what can they do? Fire you?

Well, they could count it as stealing... I guess. So basically I've been buying plenty of Best Buy stuff recently. I figure, heck, I never did get to eat those ribs and barbecue- as long as I'm still on lunch, I might as well pick up some product. I feel so evil...

By the way Jess- it's a unit weekend, my siblings are over for the next two days and we're hosting, so I doubt I'll be on much till tomorrow. (it was great talking to you though... Whew... wow. :D Missing you greatly) Talk to you all later!

-Monsterbox

Yay, dirt is yummy