YouTube – Stone Roses – Standing Here.
From Greg Golden:
Episode 2: Auto Trader
Yes, that Auto Trader. I will go to my grave with the fact that during my college career, I held down not one, but two telemarketing gigs, Auto Trader being the first. To this day I curse the siren call of a telemarket drone blowing up my land line at the way-too-late hour of 8:30pm while I’m attempting to shuttle the little one off to dream land. Having been in the caller’s seat, I’m not proud of this by any means. But that is all it was … a means to an end. The end being a two month sojourn abroad, and boy did I need the money (the pay increase from the food service industry was incentive enough to climb aboard). This again was a legacy type job in that the positions had been passed down from friend to friend. I took over for our friend Ashley Alexander who couldn’t handle working once the sun started shining. Sergio held this position much longer than I, and him being ‘senior sales’, was instrumental in securing me the position to ‘work’ along side him each evening. I believe this would hold record for the shortest job posting I held. But long enough to witness the fast-paced comings and goings of a strip mall auto rag being sent to press. I began work the Monday after a Spring Break experience during my freshman year of college, and remained employed until about June 11 after which I packed up my auto-dialer, moon-walked backwards out the door while flipping double birds at … well, nobody really because Serg and I worked by ourselves at night most of the time.
For those unfamiliar with this Pulitzer deserving publication, Auto Trader is the sophisticated version of the numerous ad-based content newspapers seen at the impulse periodicals section of your local convenience store. Pennysavers and Thrifty Nickel crinkle in their pulpy sheafs at the authority this color-paged advertising maven beholds.
In theory the business model sounds reasonable enough, especially in the pre-Internet days (The internet was in its infancy at the time and was used for getting real work and research done, I remember using Mosaic back in the day. Or you could conjure up an all out nerdy holy war by dropping into any number of Star Trek bulletin boards and proclaim that Star Wars is and always will be way better). Anyhow, the thought was that if a potential buyer is perusing the Trader and sees a photo of the prospective automobile (or boat, or ski-do) then they are more likely to initiate that first phone call to inquire about said vehicle. (Because as we all know … displaying a sexy, off-angle Fuji Film snapshot of your ’89 Ford Taurus right next to the 180 character description really IS going to be the tipping point between moving your heap out of your possession quicker than placing an add in the paper alone). The gist of mine and Sergio’s job was to cold-call all, and I mean ALL, of the unsuspecting suckers who had placed adds in the classified section of the ABQ Journal-Tribune. With corporate mandated script in hand, we would begin the tele-harassment at 5:30pm on the dot and work our way through reams of dot-matrix printed data sheets until either:
1. We reached our specified and insanely simple goal of the evening selling something like 5 adds or …
2. Our ever increasing nic-fits got the better of us and we needed a “reward”. (This would be during my college-smoking-cause it makes me look older-phase.)
At times there was supervision around, but it would be a far cry to call it adult. Maybe it would be in the form of vague half-attempts of a young-adult supervisor that would drop in every few days or so with his super-hot wife. He’d rifle off some of the new “policies” we’d be implementing into the sales division, with promises of some sort of commission-based incentive structure. More than likely a pizza-party. Anyhow, this was our opportunity to shine, so Serg and I received shiny little push button bells that we were to ring every time we bagged an “upsell”. (When an add we sold in ABQ ‘went national’ in all of the regional Auto Traders, pound that fucking bell and scream “UPSELL” at the top of your lungs to the cube-wall in front of you.) Or it could take the guise as a whirlwind mustach of self-hatred the regional manager displayed. Did he really think moving his family from Auto Trader HQ in Phoenix to a higher paying gig at the ABQ satellite branch was a good idea to save the marriage? Dude, you’re moving from Phoenix to ABQ. That’s not an upwardly vertical move, or even a lateral move. That’s moving one circle down in hell according to Dante’s Inferno ( it’s in like Canto XIV or something). But the ultimate in advanced role-model-tude was the ex-high school wrestler turned automobile photographer. Armed with nothing but cold sweats of steel and a Kodak disc-cam, he braved the grid that is the ABQ street system and lived to tell about it. We’d be getting adds arranged in far off places like ‘Gun Club’ or ‘South Coors’ and this poor boiled egg of a man had to field them.
Our social arrangement with this lot was fairly well established and understood until Serg and I got an invitation to attend some after work happy hour function at a conveniently located strip mall watering hole, probably located next door to a Little Cesar’s. Neither of us were legal age at the time, but in ABQ back then a minor could pretty much waltz into any under attended adult beverage establishment, order a cerveza, light up a smoke, and no one would pay any mind. As the mexi-lagers flowed freely so too did the pained tears of the working stiffs. Serg and I underwent a HEAVY parking lot therapy sesh with one poor soul that to this day I still don’t understand. Look, I’m always one to lend an ear and offer console to a broken spirit, but this was a gigantic can of vampire worms being dumped upon my tender soul. How does an 18 year old retort to a flurry of marriage woes, impending divorces, and custody battles when all I was thinking about was “what am I going to do with my girlfriend this weekend”, and “I leave for Europe in a month. How rad is that?!”. Answer: you don’t. Just hear the poor guy out, tell him it’ll be alright, and make your way quickly back to your car. Because really, he didn’t want answers, he wanted an ear. Sergio and I were two fine, upstanding young dudes in school with the world laid out before us. These folks were middle-aged and working at Auto Trader in ABQ. Every day. They probably looked at us and saw what could’ve been or “I wish I would’ve” or something. Who knows.
As Sergio and I car-pooled home each night along side a freshly watered gold course with the windows down and a factory stock stereo blaring, I would never replay my working hours, or think of novel ways to tweak my tele-sales skills. This job was and always will be a bogus college job. I couldn’t stand what I was doing, but at least I had some kick ass company, and enjoyed many adult-themed dramatics while ripping people off. I just needed to make some money and get overseas. There is another world out there and I had to see it, with a couple of mini-canas tambien. Vamos a jugar por la playa.
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