It has come to my attention that my telemarketing temp position is being extended (again) from its initial 1 week into a third additional full week. I’m very glad to have the regular work; before this I had been managing to get only one or two days of work a week.

Even so, it’s starting to wear on me. The job basically involves calling around 200 people a day and asking them if they’re considering attending a trade show being held later this year in Hong Kong. Most of these people have never heard of us before (I’m calling potential new buyers, all the regulars have already been called) and many are working in industries that have nothing to do with the trade show I am promoting. What’s more, the place for which I am calling does not have proper telemarketing equipment. No autodialer, not even a headset, so every call I make I have to look up the number in a spreadsheet, dial the 13 digits manually, hold the receiver to my ear, and, generally, say exactly the same thing I said in the last call, then hang up the receiver and record the results in the spreadsheet. Ideally, I’m doing this every two minutes.

Telemarketing is not a job I want to go on doing very much longer.

That said, I have made some interesting discoveries in my time as a telemarketer, and I thought I’d share some of them with you in no particular order.

• As 3:00 PM approaches, the likelyhood of actually reaching a contact listed as “Owner” declines to 0%.
• A surprising number of people feel that the most effective way to screen calls is to impersonate their own assistants. Sometimes they will say “I’ll go get him” and then wait a moment, then begin again by clearing their throats or something. Sometimes they simply admit half way through, “Well actually… this IS Linda…”
• I realized, after a week or so, that hold music became the highlight of my working experience. Some places have surprisingly good hold music and it’s a blissful break from endlessly talking-typing-dialing-talking-typing.
• Some places have talk radio playing as you hold, or a rock station gone to commercials. Invariably, just as I go on hold, they begin playing an ad or a news story about “Finding a better job now!”, “Hate your dead end job?”, or “Ten ways to find a great job in this economy!”  They ALWAYS pick me up off of hold just as I’m sure I’m about to hear something life changing.
• There are no qualifications for being a “receptionist.”  For instance, you do not need to know where Hong Kong is, or be able to spell “Trade Show.”
• People who do not need to attend Hong Kong electronics trade shows:
  -Electric Fishing Reel Systems Inc.
  -Barry’s Organic Farm
  -Stoned guy with barking dogs in the background
• America’s LEAST friendly business people are from Florida. I am not sure why this is. I began to dread Miami area codes.
• I’m nicer to businesses in Houston but they’re not always nice back.
• Some phone numbers are more interesting/easier to dial than others. After calling over two thousand phone numbers in the last two weeks, I can tell you that some numbers fall into indefinable patterns that make it easy to look at once and dial, and others are chaos, producing multiple misdials no matter how hard I focus while dialing. The former variety also produces a melodious series of tones when dialed; the latter, a cacophony.  If you have a “bad” phone number, I already resent you before you pick up.
• Working at a Chinese business with an office in New York produces some interesting moments, like when some of the employees apparently went upstairs to do Tai Chi on the roof garden. I would have gone to give it a try but I couldn’t leave my desk.
• Also, when you’re calling a Chinese person from a Hong Kong company and you admit to them that you don’t speak Chinese, nor have you ever been to Hong Kong, they seem to get offended.
• This is the best practice at rejection I have ever received and I’m in a business founded on rejection.
• The list is evil, and assembled by an idiot. No matter how obviously unrelated, I can’t skip any listings.  Also, it’s in alphabetical order by company name, so I spent the first week almost entirely on the A’s. I began dreaming of all the exciting places I could call in the B’s.
• With alphabetical listing you end up with some strange clusters of businesses. Usually it’s completely random, but then all of a sudden you’re calling “Baby Time” and “Baby Planet” and “BabyMax” for two hours. Or you hit the “Banco___” group, or the interminable “El ___” group, and are greeted in Spanish all afternoon.
• Women are way, WAY more hostile to telemarketers than men are. Why is this?
• I’ve been noticing LOTS of signs of the bad economy. Lots of disconnected numbers, lots of businesses that are shuttered except for a single person manning a “help desk.”  People openly tell me “That person no longer works here; we’re in the middle of some layoffs and I don’t think we even HAVE someone who goes to trade shows anymore.”
• I HATE VOICEMAIL. I NEVER WANT TO LEAVE ANOTHER VOICEMAIL MESSAGE AGAIN AS LONG AS I LIVE.
• The boss here seems to know what a crummy job this is. Every time she asks me back, she prefaces it by saying “Are you ok? Are you hating it? ‘Cause it’s ok if you don’t want to come back.” This helps a little. I don’t want to come back, but I also really need the money, so I’ll keep at it for now!

Overall I’m glad I’m doing this; it keeps me busy and it’s much steadier work than I had been getting the three or so weeks previous. However, I’ve decided that next week (my third) may be my last, so that I can see if I can get any other temp work from another agency. If only I could get this much work over at Condé Nast!

I took a few photos:

Here’s a link to the whole set on Flickr.

I had a chat with Miles as transcribed by Heather. I was telling him about the snow and here’s what he said:

(By the way that’s a screenshot from BeeJiveIM, a great chat client for the iPhone.)

One of the first steps I needed to take upon moving to the city was getting new headshots taken. I have never been completely satisfied with a headshot of mine from Houston, and it’s important to me to get a really good one here, because they’re a significant investment. I looked at the galleries of several photographers at Reproductions Photo, a company that makes prints of headshots and also maintains a directory of headshot photographers around the country, complete with slideshows of their work.

I picked two photographers, one based on a recommendation from a friend of a friend and one based solely on his website, and I met with both. The first photographer I met with, the one I picked based solely on the quality of his work online, was Lev Gorn.

Lev is an interesting guy. I discovered, after setting a meeting with him, that he’s not just a photographer, but also an actor and a filmmaker. In fact, he’s rehearsing Three Sisters right now with Annette (total coincidence).  I had seen him before, in fact, in Season 2 of The Wire, which is by far my favorite season of my favorite TV show of all time. You can check out his website for some examples of his work; here’s one of my favorite examples:

Paul Ben-Victor Headshot

This is another source of an interesting anecdote. The photo above is of actor Paul Ben-Victor. I’m a big fan of Ben-Victor, and have been ever since he had a lead in a terrible Sci-Fi Channel series called The Invisible Man. That show was execrable, I assure you, but Paul had this character in the show, Agent Bobby Hobbes, that made the show for me. Hobbes seemed at first like a comic foil and third wheel to the titular invisible guy, but over the show’s short two season run he showed himself to be, in fact, a great character. Sure the invisible guy could go invisible, but he was an asshole and didn’t know the first thing about policework, whereas Bobby Hobbes turned out to be an awesome cop. The developing friendship and respect between Ben-Victor’s character and the invisible guy’s was THE reason I watched that show.

Ever since then I’ve seen Paul Ben-Victor turn up in little roles here and there and I’ve always been excited to see him. Paul plays a lot of cops, a lot of gangster types, and so on. Usually I’ll notice him playing the nameless cop or mobster or whatever in one scene of movie and go “Oh Shit it’s Paul Ben-Victor!” and everyone will look at me like I’m crazy.

I was particularly excited to see Paul in Season 2 of The Wire, which is, I presume, where he met Lev. They were in a lot of scenes together as they were both part of the same mob plotline. What a great show.

Right, so there was supposed to be a point to all this… Other than that I just picked a headshot photographer…

It’s really interesting the way that New York is teeming with people that you’ve seen before. There are so many actors here, and so many of them have been in SOMETHING you’ve seen… but most of the time they go unnoticed. There’s this subtle breaking down of barriers that happens here. First you realize that these Actors with a capital A that you see on television and in films are really just actors, like any actors, and that it’s not some impossible dream to be a part of that…  Everybody from Paul Ben-Victor to Brad Pitt, they’re just actors. Good ones, but no different from me. That’s an exciting feeling.

Being that we are in what I like to call the Great Recession, this kind of thing is decidedly useful. This is one of a series of videos on recipes from the Great Depression, as presented by Clara, a charming 91 year old. While she’s waiting for things to simmer, she tells you depressing anecdotes about being poor!

I’m totally making this this week. You can check out Clara’s whole series of Great Depression recipes on her YouTube page.

Is it weird that I find this inspiring?

One of my favorite things about Twitter is the way that interesting trends seem to emerge from nowhere. One day, everyone will be twittering in the form of haiku, another day everyone is starts listing their favorite album and why… that sort of thing.

One trend that emerged in the last couple of days and which I thought was particularly funny has been people twittering fake animal facts. I have no idea how this started, but there have been some great examples. I’ll list a few of my favorites:

• #fakeanimalfacts badgers always point north

• #fakeanimalfacts One penguin is actually made up of millions of tiny penguins clumped together

• #fakeanimalfacts – in spite of their size, barn owls are huge.

• #fakeanimalfacts the differences between African and Indian elephants are purely subjective.

• #fakeanimalfacts Armadillos can only breed by being run over by motor vehicles, causing them to explode spores over the surrounding area

• The Weimaraner was originally bred by the Nazis for hunting ghosts. #fakeanimalfacts

• #fakeanimalfacts – in spite of dolphins being regarded as ‘intelligent’ creatures, most of them can’t even walk.

• Owls dont weigh anything. #fakeanimalfacts

You might notice that all of these include the text #fakeanimalfacts. This is what’s called a Hash Tag on Twitter; it’s specially included to make your tweet part of a global discussion on a topic, so that they’re all easily searched for. Here’s the current search page for more #FakeAnimalFacts.

I couldn’t help adding my own fact to this trend. Here it is:

• In the wild, certain primate species have been observed to play an organized sport simmilar to bocce ball. #fakeanimalfacts

It’s hard to believe I’ve been in New York for ten days now. I’m starting to settle in. I’ve had some adventures, some opportunities, some disappointments, some excitement; overall things have been going very well.  Here are a few of the things I have learned so far in my ten days as a New Yorker:

• I live in Sunnyside, which I recognized immediately because it’s the starting neighborhood in GTA4. (Of course, in GTA, it’s called Schottler.) There’s a famous sign at the end of my street. Here’s a picture:
  

  Sunnyside Arch

• Jane Fonda has a dog named Tulea. I almost got a job watching it while she’s on stage for her new Broadway show 33 Variations. That would have been a sweet gig.
• The stupider the name of the temp agency, the more likely they are to call you. That’s why I’m working with “Career Blazers.”
• True Fact: At any given moment, one in five New Yorkers are standing on the steps of their building telling a buddy about the fight they had last night.
• Express Trains ARE EXCITING!
• If you need to print something in New York, go to Staples! Thirty six hours and three phone calls later, half your printouts will be done!
• Before the invention of iPhones, navigating New York City was a matter of trial and error. People would ride the subway to a random stop, get out, look around, and go back in again. Average commutes were three to six years.
• Completely true: Frozen vegetables are more expensive here than fresh. Explain that one!
• The tabloid papers are really nuts. Today, ALL of them lead with the chimp attack story. My favorite headline: “Furious George.”
• The heating system in Annette’s building makes a constant noise that sounds like a kettle JUST about to boil. I’m getting used to it, but it continues to be unsettling.
• Going to a movie here costs no less than $10. I paid $16 to see Coraline in 3D at the Zigfeld theatre. Not going to make a habit of that!

So overall, things are going well. I’m going to work for the first time tomorrow at 8:30; hopefully that will be a good experience. I’m looking for a headshot photographer, to update my look, and also keeping an eye out for an acting class. I can’t wait to actually start doing THEATER again. It’s been over a month since my last show and I’m starting to miss it!

Hi there!

Most of you who are following my blog at this point are friends and family, and not the hoards of devoted fans I expect to be reading my every word in the near future. You probably aren’t wanting to see just the professional updates I’ll be posting to this blog, but also want to hear how I’m doing, what I’m up to, and all the little things that make up my life while I’m far, far away.

That’s one reason I’ll be using Twitter. If you’ve never heard of Twitter, I’ll let this video explain, it does a better job than I could:

Twitter is a social internet service, in a way like a stripped down and simplified Facebook or other social network. It allows me to post simple messages of up to 140 characters (about the length of your average text message) to a timeline, which looks kind of like a blog. This is what my personal Twitter page looks like:

Twitter Screenshot

Now, that’s just the basics. Twitter is about more than just finding out what I had for breakfast or if I’m cleaning out the rain gutters. It’s a great way to communicate. If you are on Twitter as well, it becomes very easy for you to follow my updates (you can even have them delivered to your phone as text messages!) and I can likewise follow your updates, even when I’m away from the computer.

There are a few things you may see in my “tweets” (Twitter posts) that are a bit confusing at first. Tweets can be in reply to other tweets by people I am following; these are denoted by an @username at the beginning of the post. If I mention someone by name who is also on Twitter, I may use @ and their username in the same way, to provide a link and alert them that I’m talking about them.

Sorry if that got technical. The main point, however, is that since it’s very easy for me to “tweet” quite often about my life, from the computer, my phone, or even from instant messages, you’ll likely get a much more complete picture of what’s going on with me than if you were just following my blog posts. I’ve put in a sidebar feed so that my most recent twitter posts show up on this page, but you’ll probably want to see my main Twitter page.

Why don’t you give Twitter a try? You’re probably thinking “Why should I bother with this, it’s just one more site to check and I’m already on Facebook.”  That’s exactly where Twitter shines, though. You can update quickly and easily from anywhere from your phone, and if you have a “smartphone” there’s almost certainly a Twitter program out there to give you the full features of the site from anywhere. I use Tweetie, for iPhone. Here’s  a screenshot:

Tweetie Screenshot

There are lots of fascinating people on Twitter, from friends and family to minor celebrities, and following them on Twitter and having a dialogue with them about the things that matter to them in their daily lives makes me feel close to them and constantly connected to lives other than my own. Twitter does this better than any social or internet service I’ve ever experienced.  I hope you’ll consider giving it a try, even if it seems goofy at first.

-Raygan

Official Announcement:

I am moving to New York City on February 7th. That’s right, February 7th. That’s a Friday. And very soon. I’m flying into JFK around 4:30pm on JetBlue flight 624. More details to follow.

Wish me well!

-Raygan

While the date is still pretty uncertain, I am certain that I am going to be moving to New York City some time between now and May.

This is going to be a very exciting time for me, personally and professionally, but it’s also going to mean that I am not likely to be in much theater in Houston between now and then.   So to all my fans, keep an eye on this blog, and on my Twitter feed! Things are going to get exciting soon!