Original Cin

Well, I did it. I went to the business center and had a look around 3:00 in the afternoon today. I was terrified that at any second, someone would recognize me. They had put in a new (but cheap block-letter) sign with the company’s name on the outside of the building near the office. I entered, turned the corner, and…

…the call center is gone. Vanished. There wasn’t a sound. I could see inside through the glass door and windows. There was a small paper on the floor that had presumably been stuck to the door earlier — I couldn’t read what it said. The chairs, plastic desks, and Durabrand phones had been removed — even the connections for the phones were completely gone. Nothing remains but a large, empty office, waiting to be rented out to someone new.

Earlier this year, I had a job interview at a calling center. The job was cold-calling, straight commission, for mortgages. They were even nice enough to let me to sit in for a day and see how I did. I noticed a variety of things while I was there:

• The people there were generally young. Most were recent graduates from high school. At least one was a drop-out. Everyone was talking about how they were making big money, but…
• The desks were plastic
• The phones were $10 Durabrand things from Wal-Mart, which is fine for home use, but really did stick out as inadequate in that environment.
• The best salesperson admitted to having “tons of debt” and worried aloud about his car payments.
• I was a bit uncomfortable around people who, quite frankly, were a touch sociopathic.

I had read a bit, just a bit about signaling on Overcoming Bias, and I realized that while you can’t depend on people pulling in six figures to advertise this fact to the world, the extremely wealthy don’t generally sit behind plastic desks punching numbers on generic home phones. Combined with the idea that a good work environment was something to shoot for, I politely said that I wasn’t interested any more, and walked away. At the time, I thought was giving up a smaller than promised but still real income to do the right thing and be able to live comfortably with myself. Now, looking at the way the housing market in the U.S. has changed, it’s obvious I didn’t give up so much at all. In retrospect, I suspect that the shoddy, unprofessional environment actually signaled something else — that the call center was temporary, not a permanent investment.

It’s not aways that I get a chance to go and see if I’m right about my intuition. On my next day off from my current job, I’m going to discreetly go to the business center that housed this mortgage company, and see if I notice anything.