Today it is 8 years ago I took a one-way flight from Copenhagen to Barcelona with 2 suitcases!
What a journey and life experience it has been..
Some of the jobs I had here I wouldn’t not even imagen in my wildest dreams I would be able to do!! Some were good, and others was WTF I am I doing here LOL
All in call centres serving the Danish marked, yep speaking Danish all day at work in Barcelona.
Here is a list of some of them:
· Sold computers to corporate clients, I was not so good at that.
· Car rental, we had around 80-110 calls per day per agent, in Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and English. Please note I don’t understand Swedish, Norwegian 100% oops, but HR was convinced it was all the same language so I had to do it.
· Dating website moderator, answering minimum 15 emails per hour to get bonus (that’s a lot). Super nice country managers, but challenging UK customers.
· Kellogg’s & Pringles customer service, OMG the stories I can tell you from that job, you wouldn’t believe me, but they are true. Okay here is one: They stopped producing a breakfast bar and a customer got so angry he emailed in a photo of him and a tiger and said he would let the tiger lose and erase the entire UK population if we didn’t put it back in production!
How do you answer that with a template? I was allowed this time only to free-style the answer. Also had a 45 minutes call with a woman about 3 broke Pringles!! LOL
· Sell shares for corporate clients, that was a really good job and my highest trade for a client was 650,000$ and one time 85,000$ got lost in my system, but I found them again 3 weeks later. Imagen me as a Wall Street Trader?? I did it. Later Citi Bank closed their European office and we all got fired.
· Technical support for Smart TV, at the interview they told me it was for a web shop, but first day of training it was super technical support. We had 5 minutes to update software and re-install all channels over the phone with “Aunt Anna 85 years old”, good luck with that!!
One time the AC broke in July and I ask my manager if we could get free bottle water due to the heat, he said: Here is a plastic cup and there is water in the toilet – I resigned after that!
· Online gambling website, they said it was like the stock marked, but you would also gain money if stock marked went down (??)
Coming from Citi Bank I didn’t get it, how can you make money when shares are going down in value? So, I asked a lot of questions and found out it was a gambling website = I got fired on WhatsApp.
· Now I work for a motocross website, advising customers in spokes, chains, helmets and so on. It’s the best call center I have worked for here so far, yes there are room for improvements with their super old grey systems, but I have a permanent contact.
Many contracts here are only for 6 or 12 months and if sales for the company is going good = you can stay, otherwise you get fired with a 14 days notice and you are expected to stay positive and do a good job in that period. That can be a bit hard when you have Vikingo / gypsy blood in the veins..
· As you probably know, I am studying in the evenings / weekends to be come a RTT therapist. I personally think and feel that is a bit more my life calling and hopefully later in the year I will have my first paying clients helping them feel better about themselves. See my personal blog at www.PeterJulius.com
They things you do for 7,50 € per hour and a bit of sunshine!
It wouldn’t be me without any of those experiences, because they all taught me something, just please remember to be nice to the call center agent if you need to call for support – its not our dream job, but it pays the bills..
So when people tells me: Your personally confuses me - I just say: Look at the job I had!!
Today I will spend at home, clean Casa Julius, put on some clean bed-linen and maybe write a song.
I believe in you 💯%
Have a great Easter Sunday!
Peter Julius
Ps yes, I got angle wings on, because I can be good!
If you treat me good, I treat you better!!
