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[tania]

here is my situation: i work full-time at staples business depot as a "technology consultant". i got this position completely on accident; i was originally hired just as a regular minimum wage associate and then a couple of months in the original consultant left and management realized that i was the most qualified full-time person there to fill the position so they just sort of handed it to me. this means that my responsibilities, among other things, include a) micromanaging the technology department and the associates within, b) performing system setups and backups and other minor technician services on people's computers, and c) selling said services to people (probably the most important one).

my problem is that, as a consultant, i essentially need to be really, really good at my job and set a really good example for the people i manage in order to keep it. however, i am actually pretty bad at my job. i think all of the services we offer are ridiculously overpriced and that nearly everybody i deal with on a daily basis is a complete and utter asshole. coupled with the fact that i am more than likely quitting to move and go back to school in september anyway and this jobs only purpose is really just to save up money for that, all of these factors add up to make me a really, really terrible salesperson. my job is very secure and there is absolutely no chance at all of me being fired, but regardless i've been both subtly and not-so-subtly informed by management that if i don't get my numbers up within the next couple of months, they are going to start looking to hire someone far more qualified for the position to replace me and i'll end up both being demoted back to my original position and with part-time instead of full-time hours. as much as i hate my job, i desperately want to keep it for now because i really need the money and i really can't afford part-time hours or to look for a new job at this point. however, i also really just don't know how to care enough about anything i do to actually be decent at it because i've always found sales to be inherently awful and dishonest no matter what. basically i think my only hope of keeping my job until september is to get to the root of all this, which is to figure out within the next few weeks how to actually enjoy something about it, anything at all.

i need motivation, big time. if there is anybody here who works in sales or deals with people a lot on a daily basis or both, what do you like about your job? what keeps you motivated? what advice can you give me that will help me both be better at my job and also not completely hate it? how do you sell something you really don't give a shit about? how do you do well at any job you completely despise, period? these are the kinds of questions i have. i know a lot of people find careers in this industry so there must be something enjoyable about it but i am just not finding it at all. any input at all would be lovely. you rock.

[KvP]

What I like about my job vis a vis customer service is that there is a very limited range of problems that I can run into, and I can fix them all in short order, thus making me look good.

It's all about looking good.

So good luck with that.

[Lunchbox]

I was taught when I was first learning how to answer phones to 'smile on the phone' because somehow this makes you sound nicer or something.
I now use this wisdom whenever work is frustrating me, just smile through it (don't grit your teeth, make it is genuine as you can muster) and you will end up looking and sounding nice so even if you desperately want to kill someone they don't realise it.

[Jimmy the Squid]

I work in a call centre selling stuff to people who call up. These people are generally pissed off from the word dot so it can be difficult to calm them down. I really hate my job but I try to keep in mind that the people I'm talking to are generally complete idiots and they are angry and frustrated because they are too stupid to be able to figure anything out. It's your job to try and help these pitiful creatures and make their bullshit pointless lives easier. If you try to take this attitude to every customer you speak to (making sure to keep it underneath, you don't want to be too condescending) then it will make you feel better about the whole thing.

[KvP]

Oh and one more thing - take every chance you can get to ogle the customers.

[öde]

1) Smile. Smiling will put you in a better mood, and will put customers in a better mood too.
2) Take pride in doing a good job. Even though you hate your job, you can still enjoying doing it well.
3) Sell shit you don't care about well because it's for someone else. I'm guessing you might have bought gifts for people in the past. They probably weren't all stuff that you're interested it, but I imagine you went to some length to try to get the best gift for the person. This is kinda like that, the stuff you're selling is for the customer so you need to do everything you can to get them what they want for the best price/deal.
4) The customer is always right, until they really aren't. Avoid confrontations and don't argue with the customers. Do everything you can to make them leave the store happy. If something is really out of scope (can I have this 52-inch LCD TV for half price since it's not in the colour I want?) just calmly tell them that you can't do it. It helps to be able to explain why (unfortunately the manufacturer only offers these colours, there's nothing we can do about that, or the price).

There should be plenty of stuff about sales and customer service on the net, if your company hasn't actually trained you in any of it (good job, company!).

[BrittanyMarie]

I'm in the same boat, Tania. I told one of my managers that it's hard to try to sell these things because I am a service advisor, and I wouldn't advise any customers to take these things anyway. The manager told me "Well, would you advise them to have a credit card and incur debt?" No (and that was her point). But they have them anyway. In my case, all I'm doing is offering the service, and when I don't offer it, I am basically deciding for the customer that they don't want it. They should probably be the ones to make that decision if they want it or not. I've started tracking my offers and ones I get; tracking them makes me more aware of how few I do offer so that I can hopefully do better. I still hate it though so I can't really help you on that part.

[Ozymandias]

Problem 1: You have to sell shitty services.
Problem 2: Your customers are assholes.

Mutual solution: Consider selling the services getting paid to fuck over some assholes.

[öde]

Consider selling the services getting paid to fuck over some assholes.

Sometimes this is my solution too.

[KvP]

Oh and one more thing - take every chance you can get to ogle the customers.

Knowing you, you're way ahead of me here.





Perv.

[ViolentDove]

Did you just call yourself a perv?

'Cause that's what it looks like.

[Ptommydski]

Start looking for another job. I never understood why people stop doing this once they have one.

Companies are actually far more likely to employ somebody who already has a job.

[KvP]

Did you just call yourself a perv?

'Cause that's what it looks like.

You're quick.

I'm going to have to step up my game from now on.

[tania]

Start looking for another job. I never understood why people stop doing this once they have one.

it looks really bad on your employment history and resume if you come off as a person who only keeps a job for a few months until a better one comes along. i've had employers in the past ask me questions like "so, why did you leave so-and-so after only four months?" which is always pretty awkward and uncomfortable to answer. taking a job only to then leave it as soon as a better offer comes along probably won't make your employers want to give you a great reference in the future either. considering i am probably going to be moving in september anyway, that'll leave me with two jobs that i only worked for a few months and i want to avoid that as much as possible.
that and i sort of want to take a really long vacation in june, which my current employer is fine and dandy with but which any job i try to find at this point more than likely won't be.

[Jimmy the Squid]

One of my last three jobs involved me getting fired for fraud. Needless to say I do not have a reference for that job.

[öde]

Fraudian slip?

[iamiam]

when you are trying to sell things, and fake like you give a shit about customers' bullshit problems, slip into a southern (U.S.) accent.  everything you say will sound about 35% nicer & more genuine.

[tania]

southern accents have no effect in the frozen wasteland of canada

[iamiam]

ha, i like how you edited your original joke in favor of a different one.

anyways... guess you're fucked.  sorry.

[tania]

dang seriously i thought that was pretty stealthy and no one would notice.
something like 50% of my posts have the original joke edited a few minutes later in favour of a better one, please tell me it is not that noticeable every single time or else i will feel pretty ridiculous.

[Jimmy the Squid]

Not every time. But certainly that time.

[jhocking]

I thought you had some cool feature that changes the text of your posts every time I refresh the page.

[Sox]

The customer is not always right. There are some customers who really are just dicks, and your employer will agree with you. You don't have to worship the ground your customers walk on. Be exceptional to the good ones. Deal with the bad ones. Just smile and be polite to the rest. Everybody will say "Go out of your way to be great to the customers!"
My advice is "Don't".
There is just not enough energy in the world to be nice to every customer.
If we found some miraculous new renewable energy source that could power every electrical device on the entire planet and fuel every car for the next gajillion years, we would still not have the energy required for a human being to put that much effort into a retail position.
Don't even attempt it.
You will ruin yourself.
There's nothing that'll make you hate your job more than having to smile at an asshole and go out of your way to help them.

If you want to better deal and cope with your job, forget about your job. You're not your job. I know it's taking up all your time right now, and it feels like there's no space for anything else. I know you feel like you don't get to be yourself and that you're not enjoying yourself. It's all the job's fault, you're miserable when you're there. There are unrealistic demands. It's stressful and time consuming, draining and exhausting.
Forget about that. Make the most of the time you have outside of work. Enjoy yourself. Relax. Do things that make you happy. Make sure you go to bed smiling. Have a breakfast that puts you in a great mood. Listen to happy music. Talk to people that make you feel good.

Make the most of your free time and your job will get a whole lot easier. You get to go home after your shift ends, don't you? You have job security, right? Being happy and healthy is far more important than being an amazing salesperson. They're probably not even looking for that, they're just looking for somebody who can handle the position, and you can. You can handle the fuck out of that shit. You just have to calm down. Decompress. Unzip. Unwind. Sprawl. If you find your job stressful, it shows.

I bet your job isn't even hard and that you just feel overwhelmed. You can get on top of it. Do what you have to, not what you can, don't overexert yourself on something as unimportant as making sure that the obnxoious fat guy who spawls all over you when he talks has a comprehensive answer to one of his questions just so he can ask a male salesperson instead.
Tell that asshole that you're busy. You have more important things to worry about.

More importance on your wellbeing, less important on your job.
In ten years, it won't even matter whether or not you were an amazing technology consultant for Staples. You won't have to work in retail anymore. You could put all the energy you have into this job, and just a few years down the line, there will have been no real benefit from it. You'll still remember it as a stressful and difficult time, though, if you keep exhausting yourself. You think this is bad, just wait for Grad School to kick your ass. From one stressful environment to another, right? IF you keep exhausting yourself.
So don't. This time next year, it won't matter.
You don't have to do this forever. You only have to do it now.

Having a nice stress/bullshit free day is the best way to handle this, I am sure. Do a good job. But don't slowly kill yourself.

[Sox]

Hey, that post made it sound like I care about your well being, but I just want to reassure you, I don't. That was just impartial advice I'd give freely to anybody in your situation.
You smell funny and your head is gigantic and you are also a huge loser.

[glyphic]

Why do you build me up, buttercup, just before you let me down?


I have always taken the mindset "The customer wants this. It may be useless and I may not think they need it, but they want it."


Tommy, speaking from my position in Human Resources, people who are currently employed can't start the job immediately. Maybe the current employer will offer them something to make them stay. Risky. Plus, if they go ahead and suddenly quit their current job for the new one, you have to wonder when they'll do it to you. People whose resumes list more jobs than years in the job market are always fun to interview. They sputter on about "bad environments" and "better opportunities," but the whole time, I just hear "UNRELIABLE AND DISLOYAL."

[Ptommydski]

i've had employers in the past ask me questions like "so, why did you leave so-and-so after only four months?" which is always pretty awkward and uncomfortable to answer.

This is a really good question to answer in an interview with a prospective new employer. It gives you the opportunity to say something along the lines of how you realised that they weren't a suitable employer for somebody with ambition and you felt their training opportunities were extremely limited, which is why you're looking for a job with XYZ (the people currently interviewing you).

when you are trying to sell things, and fake like you give a shit about customers' bullshit problems, slip into a southern (U.S.) accent.  everything you say will sound about 35% nicer & more genuine.

I never get used to when Mai does this. For some reason she still registers as being European/Arabic in my mind so when she does her Southern accent in public, it still freaks me out completely.

[mberan42]

Tania --

Welcome to the next 40 years of your life. Deal with it.

(Drinking doesn't help. Trust me.)

[glyphic]

For some odd reason, telling people that makes me realize that everyone thinks that everyone else hates their jobs and what the jobs do to them as a person.

I have referred to at least one job as soul-devouring.

I think we can find work that makes us happy as long as we don't give up.

Don't give up, Tania.

[Ptommydski]

I doubt Tania will be working in retail for much longer. Maybe a couple of years at most.

Personally I really like bar jobs in terms of those have to be doing something part-time jobs you take during further education. They are much more social and the product sells itself.

[BlahBlah]

I really thought this this thread was going to be like that Douglas Coupland novel.

[michaelicious]

Which one?

[michaelicious]

Wait, nevermind.

[Patrick]

(Drinking doesn't help. Trust me.)

Meth does!

[jhocking]

Define "help."

[Patrick]

Well at least she'll have energy.

[tania]

i'll say no to meth for now, hating my job has given me bad enough skin as is

[Patrick]

Okay fine I will actually try to help.

Knowing that you can refuse somebody service because of their attitude? Pretty rad.

Actually threatening to just hang up the phone and not fix their problems, and then hearing the "vvvddddddddddddtttttt" of the gears as they backpedal and suck up to you and basically polish your ass to a shine from that point onward? Priceless.

Getting paid through all of the above is just icing.

[glyphic]

The realization that most companies find those actions to be a pretty serious policy violation?

Also priceless.

[BrittanyMarie]

depends! my old store was totally awesome, if someone directly swore at me (ie: fuck you, you piece of shit, whatev) I could kick them out and ALSO ban them from the store AND ALSO write about it in our Stupid Customer Stories account. It was an account where we'd put all the extra ridiculous things that happened for other people to laugh at. also supervisors at my current place of employment (a big ol' bank) can kind of yell at cardholders if they are being total douchebags.

and right now i am a douchebag because the weather is totally shit and i ordered a pizza and put 47th st n instead of 47th st s and the delivery driver is currently lost. guess who's gonna get a big tip? he is!

[tania]

refuse somebody service because of their attitude

threatening to not fix their problems

on the contrary, this is the attitude i have right now and also what's making me so terrible at my job in the first place, hence why i started this thread

[Patrick]

Tania you're well within your rights to refuse service to abusive customers. Glyphic, I don't know where you learned otherwise, but I've hardly ever been to any kind of service-based business where there wasn't a sign to prove it. Just because you have to be respectful to your customers does NOT mean you have to take anybody's bullshit just because that person happens to have discovered a gigantic, steaming turd in their breakfast cereal that day.

As for the sales stuff, if they're dumb enough to buy something that they don't need, it's not your fault they're dumb, and you're merely pulling a P.T. Barnum by capitalizing on what enormous suckers they are. And you could actually be helping somebody else a lot by selling them something they could actually put to great use (which would ideally be the goal). The former will hopefully tickle you, the latter should ease your conscience.

[BrittanyMarie]

I believe he's the dude who does the hiring. You can't refuse service to just any old dickass, it's usually only if they're being abusive. And then, when they start saying "I will kill you" or "I will blow up your goddamn bank" you can get a manager on the line  who will pull the call and listen, soon as s/he has verified that a threat was indeed leveled at you, s/he takes the call and then you call the security dept, who call the police, who then call the police in that person's town, who then go to that person's house and have A Chat About Terroristic Threats. That happened a couple weeks ago!

Sorry that was off-topic.

[Jimmy the Squid]

Hmm, at the call centre I work at if someone gets abusive or starts to say offensive things then you warn them that if they keep doing it that you're going to hang up on them. If they do it again you hang up. It's probably the one good thing about my job.