Blasted Twice in a Day

Although not impossible to believe, it has never ever crossed my mind that I could get ‘blasted’ twice in a short duration of just 6 hours, in the same day, by two different companies.

In the morning, I returned a call to a lady at this company called Sports Marketing Group. It took five tries to finally reach her… but that’s not the real problem that really affected me. It was her attitude.

The evening before, she left a voice message in my hand-phone & told me to call her back tomorrow morning. She sounded very formal & professional over the phone & initially I had a very good impression of her & the company. When I finally managed to reach her, she un-cordially yet professionally thanked me for returning her call & immediately shot me one question very directly.

I’m not unhappy about her question nor find it unreasonable that she had asked. But it is her ‘very-soon-to-change’ tone of voice & attitude that annoyed me. Firstly, she threw that question straight in my face in a very strong tone of voice.

She asked, “Why did you apply for a sales job?” For a moment, I was taken aback. Yeah, I know the job title has the word ‘sales’ in it, but the full title is ‘Sales Management Trainee’. Furthermore, in my university education & at my first workplace StarHub, I learnt that sales & marketing goes hand-in-hand. Plus, I majored in marketing in my university undergraduate studies, so I applied for this job.

Thus, I asked to confirm that, “This company is ‘Sports Marketing Group’, right?” Almost immediately, I detected her change of tone of voice to somewhat of an irritation when she replied, “Yes, but this is a sales role.” To find out more, I asked, “How is the nature of sales like for this job? Is it like cold-calling, door-to-door or road-show kind of sales?”

I honestly feel that this is not a wrong question to ask, coz in my work experience as a temp doing outdoor sales, working in two different positions at StarHub, as well as chatting from friends in the line of sales, I learnt that there are many different kinds of sales jobs – road-show, door-to-door, outdoor, cold-calling, back-end, etc. Plus, I have personally done 3 kinds of sales so far – outdoor, door-to-door & back-end sales, though comprising slightly more than a year of experience, but I knew that there is a difference, so I decided to ask this lady.

But her tone of voice turned from irritation to plain annoyance as our conversation went on. She retorted that she won’t be going into these details yet, coz she wants to find out why I applied for this job.

So I went on to answer her question by saying, “I’m interested in sports & would like to establish a career in the area of marketing.” I don’t think there’s anything wrong with my phrasing of words so far… & I have managed to check & steady my tone of voice, even though I knew that she had become plainly annoyed at me.

Then she went on to say that this is a pure sales job, which means that it involves generating sales. In my mind, I was thinking, “Duh! Of course lah! Why do marketing (i.e. advertising) without any intention to generate sales from it?” But of course I didn’t say that.

She proceeded to ask me, “So comparing the two, which is your interest?” I replied that “Sports is one of my interests, but I would like to do marketing as a job.” I still don’t think there’s anything wrong in my replies so far…

In exasperation (yes, I literally mean this descriptive word), she said, “This company has two separate divisions… one division does sales & another division does marketing. So I think this is not the job that you are looking for.”

I knew what she was getting at… & perhaps this may have annoyed her further by asking again, “May I ask how is the nature of this sales role?” Yet, I still seriously didn’t think that it was wrong to ask, coz if it was back-end sales, I wouldn’t mind considering coz I have done it well before. It was all in the interest of finding out more about this job, coz ‘sales’ is not just one kind mah…

This time, she was really agitated & said, “I cannot supply you with this information unless it is a face-to-face interview.” There was a pause of about 2 seconds before she continued saying, “What I can do is to send over your resume to the marketing division & keep it there to see if there is any available position. But there are no vacancies at this point of time.”

I seriously really didn’t believe what she said, coz her tone of voice was just plainly blasting me in the face, telling me, “Just off the phone & stop wasting my time!” It was already getting very awkward & uneasy for both of us, so I said, “Its okay then, thanks a lot.” And we both put down the phone.

This experience with her over the phone hurt me quite a lot. I really don’t fancy getting blasted for asking relevant & important questions to clarify, so that I could better answer her questions! Who would?

I really felt as if she was psychologically screaming into my mind, “Why the hell did you apply for a sales job when you don’t even know why you want to do it?!”

I have seriously never met anyone who screamed so loudly into my mind before. Throughout our conversation, I felt as if there were more critical words being blasted into my mind, compared to the number of words that she actually spoke! And it wasn’t as if her tone was pleasant, or even neutral, given her attitude towards me. She sounded professional, but unpleasant!

Hey, I’m just one of the whole bunches of people out there applying to a job advert, which we think & hope may be suitable, so that we could get a decent job to earn a living. What’s with her attitude?

After some reflection, I began to notice one similarity about her & my ex-boss Gladys. Both of them are highly objective, assertive & strong in speech. Not that it’s bad or wrong, but I feel that such people are just interested in getting to the point, regardless of how their words come across to the other party. In short, once this lady concluded that I’m not the kind of person for this job, she just wants to put down the phone & stop wasting her time. I mean, that’s fine, considering that like everyone else, she’s probably very busy with her work, but the same concept applies, since she’s just as busy as everyone else, but everyone else isn’t rude & sarcastic towards me.

I will share my second experience in my next Blog entry…