The Warning Signs
Listening to your gut feelings.
Hi! It's been a minute. Life's been hectic. So much so that I've got a cautionary tale to tell, which involves me getting hired at a new job, starting work, and quitting all in the last week!
Some of you may recall that I've been looking for a new gig since April of last year. If you're new or unfamiliar, you can read all about my trials and tribulations from around that point and onward in the “Retail Therapy” section on this post. I had spent the year (or more...) learning more about programming and coding, but also desperately applying for any job that came my way. Anything that I figured I'd be able to do, anyway. I'm a 40-year-old college dropout with very few in-demand skills (working on that, obviously!), so it's not exactly an easy path in what is already a challenging job market. The icing on the cake is that I also now live in an area of the country that has practically zero jobs unless I want to return to retail. There's also manufacturing and factory work, but I passed out working behind a customer service desk at a big box store in this town, so I'm not so sure manual labor is going to be on the table for me either.
In late March, my sister, MissFiasco, emailed me a job listing for a work-from-home role with a healthcare company. The title was “Radiology Scheduler.” It mentioned how much it paid — not much, but more than what any retail job in the area was dishing out — and as the title suggests, would involve scheduling patients for medical imaging and diagnostic procedures. It did involve talking to patients on the phone, which I honestly despise, but it didn't necessarily sound like a call center, either. So I figured it would probably be okay. Not only would I get to work from home in my pajamas and start earning some dough again, but it also sounded like I would play a role in genuinely helping people, which is always a nice feeling. So I gave it a shot and sent them my resume.
A couple of weeks into April, I received an email back from the company. They were interested in interviewing me! It was the first time anyone had even shown interest in me professionally since I went to talk to a temp agency in February with no success. Naturally, I booked the interview. And that's when things started getting strange...
My first interview was conducted by an AI chatbot. Yes, you read that correctly. My interview was basically conducted by ChatGPT or Copilot or whatever. It asked me some fairly standard questions and suggested that I be as thorough and detailed as possible because, if I passed this round, then I would be invited to interview again with a human representative. It was weird, but I kept going because... Well, because I needed a job. I did enough to impress Chad (a nickname MissFiasco and I gave to ChatGPT), so I progressed to the next interview. It was scheduled to be a 30-minute video chat, and I was advised that the dress would be business casual. I did my best to look presentable since I'm almost always dressed very casually, snapped a photo to my family's group chat on Discord, and joined the Zoom meeting early and prepared.
Much like the interview with Chad, the interview went well enough, but it still just felt odd. The woman that I was speaking to seemed highly indifferent throughout the entire conversation. On the other hand, I like to sprinkle in a little sarcasm or jokes here and there, so the contrast was a little jarring. I'm not one of those creepy dudebros who think that women always need to be warm and receiving, but man... She did not show even the slightest hint of a sense of humor. It was as if smiling were simply not allowed while on the clock. Regardless, the process continued afterward, and I was sent an offer letter by mid-May. An offer letter that invited me to accept the role of an “Engagement Specialist,” which I had not applied for. The shift that I had requested was also changed, and the compensation was a bit less than the radiology scheduling role. I emailed back the recruiter and inquired as to why I was being offered a position with hours and wages that I did not apply for. She simply stated that the Radiology Scheduler role was “no longer available.”
This was my first major red flag.
The interview with Chad and the subsequent recruiter were strange, but I brushed them off because I was desperate enough to get working. But this was the exact moment that I remember thinking, “I don't know about this.” The vibes were off and, frankly, I felt that they had pulled a bait-and-switch on me. And in retrospect, I see now that this is when I should have declined the offer and dodged the bullet completely. But again, the siren song coming from incoming money was too strong. I signed the offer letter and, in return, they shipped me a computer with which to work from home. And the family rallied to help me prepare. To the point where my brother-in-law (aka MrFiasco) transformed a room in our home that had been serving as a storage room into a home office for me. Complete with an actual cubicle! I was getting nervous but excited, especially by my new workspace. I was no longer going to be crammed into a small corner of my bedroom, where my current desktop setup is! I was going to be an unstoppable workforce of one back here!
Last Thursday was my first day. I went through orientation and training on both Teams and Zoom, and learned that the company was effectively a healthcare call center. I cringe at those two words together because working for a call center is one of the last things I have ever had any desire to do. As I mentioned earlier, I despise speaking on the phone in the first place. But they informed us that we would only be making outbound phone calls to insurance members to try and convince them to schedule an in-home health assessment, which is where a nurse practitioner visits their home and reviews their overall health, medications, etc. My last office-based job that I had worked at for more than 8 years eventually threw me a phone and told me to play call center, but this company surprisingly had an entire automated phone system that included an actual script, and you were able to schedule the appointments in the same software! That seemed fairly easy and convenient. Maybe I could do this job! The trainers also seemed friendly and very knowledgeable. I won't lie: The first three or four days were even kinda fun. I was digging it.
That was until Day #5. I don't know if my trainer was just having a spectacularly bad day, but there were a few moments throughout the morning where her friendliness seemed as though it was starting to wane. At one particular point, I was essentially told to stop taking notes on a topic and to start doing a quiz about the same topic instead. And then, earlier in the day, we were directed to complete an activity that involved us recording ourselves doing a practice phone call with yet another AI chatbot. When the AI chatbot broke down for numerous people in the training class and stopped letting us progress, assistance was not exactly forthcoming. And when the assistance finally did show up, it was entirely useless. By the time we went on our lunch break yesterday, I started feeling pretty triggered. I've described the feeling to my family multiple times now as feeling like workplace PTSD. My eagerness to keep learning and to try and make things work for this job withered away and was instantly replaced by a sense of panic and dread in the middle of my stomach. My spidey sense was tingling. I'd been here before.
And in a moment of clarity, I came to the entire reality of the situation. This was a call center, I was a salesperson (there was even commission!), my higher-ups were unwilling to help, and I was once again going to be expected to address questions for people that I did not know the answers to. Furthermore, my target demographic was vulnerable elderly people who were likely being taken advantage of by their insurance policies anyway. We were instructed that these health assessments were yearly benefits that they receive for free, but as my famously inappropriate father likes to say, “there ain't no free lunch.” And sure, the calls were mostly scripted, but we were also advised to “manage resistance” when folks tried declining the assessment, which also felt scummy. I quickly realized that I wasn't digging it, after all.
Then I quit! I was that guy who went to lunch and never came back. After I signed off, I packed up their computer and immediately shipped it back out to them this morning in the very same box it arrived in.
Jiggy's Journal now has an AMA (Ask Me Anything) page! You got 🔥burning questions🔥 for me? Maybe a comment or suggestion? Check out the page here and submit everything that's on your mind. Afterwards, I'll respond in a future post!
And while I'm absolutely certain this was the correct decision to make, I'm disappointed to say the very least. Nobody knows how much I wanted to be a productive member of society again. My family has been extremely supportive for the most part, but I know that I'm a drain on them financially, so I think they're at least a little disappointed in me, too. I know that I'm also exceptionally privileged to have enough of a support system currently in place that I'm granted the option of even considering leaving a job when I'm mentally in distress. Not everyone can do that, so it wasn't a decision that I made lightly. I did try my best. I took several pages of handwritten notes throughout training, did my best to fully understand the company's campaign that I'd been hired for, and adjusted everything else in my orbit to rotate around my new work schedule. Despite my gut instinct frequently trying to communicate to my brain that this wasn't going to work.
So my unemployment journey continues. I'm still working on coding. Maybe even refocusing on it a little more since I started to slack off on that a bit. Hopefully, I can eventually develop that skill into something employable. I'm still making web content, like always, for the love of it and because it earns me a little pocket change here and there. (By the way, have you subscribed to this publication? What about my Twitch channel?? Or maybe you'd like to buy me a cup of coffee??? 👀) I'm still open and looking for any other jobs that might surprise me and somehow won't be completely soul-crushing. And otherwise, I'm chillin' with my silly little games and shows. (Yo, Severance, Silo, and Foundation have been rocking my world lately. Get you some Apple TV+!)
Let this also serve as a reminder to listen to your internal monologue! Trust your gut instincts! I understand that they aren't always right, and maybe we are just cucumbers with anxiety, but your feelings are valid, and there is a reason why they are making you feel that way. Don't ignore the warning signs! Otherwise, you might just unwittingly find yourself in a call center.
In the meantime, you know if anyone's hiring? If they aren't completely drinking the corporate Kool-Aid, shoot me an email! We'll be besties forever. ❤️