In April of 2016, about a month into our Canadian adventure, I accepted full time employment with the self-proclaimed largest junk removal company in the world.
I was to be an agent in their call centre, taking incoming calls from whoever felt like calling in, with the ultimate goal of booking as many junk removal jobs as possible. As often seems to be the case in my life, it was a job I had no experience with in a totally foreign environment, the perfect opportunity to learn new skills.
The company was a franchised business started up and still headquartered in Vancouver, with owner/operator franchises throughout Canada, the U.S.A. and Australia. Most calls required dealing with Americans, the ultimate test of patience, though I worked later shifts to coincide with peak call times from Australia (time differences, yo).
Basically the system worked like this: customer has a bunch of old furniture or household rubbish lying around, they call in, we give them a run-down of the service over the phone and arrange a time for two guys in a truck to show up at their location to give them an estimate on the cost of removing the items based on the space the items take up in their truck, if the customer likes the price the guys go to work and get the stuff they have loaded up to be taken off and disposed of with recycling or donating being the preferred method where available.
For the most part it was an enjoyable experience. By nature of the job, the people I worked with were all very friendly and made for a lot of fun in between calls. Fostering a positive workplace culture was high on the list of company priorities and they did a pretty good job of it. In particular the other people on the Australian team were all great and a good source of home culture (or close enough to it anyways).
While working in a call centre got boringly repetitive pretty quick, I was trained in different aspects of the job pretty frequently. Between that and sales competitions on a daily, weekly and monthly basis it was bearable for the 6 or so months I was there. It was rare that I got through a full week without some kind of bonus money from comps and I even managed to win myself a kindle in one of the monthly contests which was pretty sweet.
On top of being relatively well paid and incentivised, the company also gave me a benefits package which I got a few free chiropractor sessions and a couple of therapeutic massages out of. My one regret is not using more of the benefit money offered while I was there. Oh and an endless supply of decent filter coffee didn't hurt either.
While I'm definitely glad to be on the other side of the experience, it was a huge help to have stable full time work in Vancouver. It enabled Clem and I to live comfortably while both putting enough away to be enjoying our travel time as a I write this and never thinking twice about getting out to experience what Vancouver had to offer (So many good restaurants, a couple of good coffee spots, Ellie Goulding live, Canucks hockey, Book of Mormon, Grouse Grind, Capilano suspension bridge to name a few).
The getting sworn at by people who called us in the first place over things as trivial as pricing was never fun, the people dumb enough to think a free service could afford extensive advertising and a 1-800 number were insufferable but the many happy customers served both new and returning and the friends I worked with made it worthwhile. Working in a call centre co-ordinating junk removal was a test of patience, an opportunity to improve sales skills, an opportunity to improve customer service skills and lead to some solid friendships along the way. As much as I don't miss it, I'm glad to have had the experience.
Wednesday, December 21, 2016
Monday, December 19, 2016
First Weeks in Canada
Upon arrival in Vancouver, Clem and I were met simultaenously with the excitement of possibilities and the overwhelming list of things that need to be accomplished within a short time when moving to a new place.
We had temporary accommodation sorted courtesy of Couchsurfing (Shout out to Taz, the best host anyone could ask for) which gave us a bit of freedom in our first few days to get the rest sorted at a relatively leisurely pace.
We were exceptionally lucky with how smoothly everything went for us after our arrival. Our first real day, we stopped in at a Service Canada centre and had our S.I.N's (basically Canada's version of a social security number) sorted in less than an hour, got bank accounts set up through TD who offer 0 fees (North American banks suck for fees, they sting you wherever they can) for the first 6 months on any account for people who are new to Canada and started our search for permanent housing.
After combing through padmapper, kijiji and craiglist for suitable places within our price range that looked to be in accessible areas of the city, we fired off a few messages and setup a couple of viewing times. Everything had been so easy for us so far and everyone had lived up to the stereotype of Canadians being nice that we were beginning to get suspicious. Surely, something had to give sooner or later. It didn't. The first place we viewed was perfect for us. A downstairs but not basement suite with our own bathroom, kitchen and well sized bedroom and our own outdoor access in a house with 5 other people. Basically it was a private space with the option to come and go through our own door without having to go into any of the rest of the house if we didn't want to, but also living with a bunch of great people so plenty of social opportunities too.
The next day we officially moved into our new place which came unfurnished. Again resorting to kijiji and craigslist we quickly found someone who sold ex-display and ex-hotel beds on the cheap and was willing to drop us off a queen mattress and boxspring to our door for about $100. The bed was perfect, the mattress super comfortable and clean and the guy who dropped it off helped us get it set up as well.
With long term accommodation sorted in a spot that was 5 minutes walk from the skytrain (Vancouver's metro train network, basically their version of a subway) and only a handful of stops from downtown, the only thing left to do was get work sorted. Clem and I both signed up to a few recruitment agencies with the hope of finding the odd bit of temp work to pay our bills until we found something long term.
I got in touch with a moving company and as well as a bit of labour work through agencies, I got the odd day on the trucks. Highlights from that experience include moving a multi-millionaire out of a North Vancouver waterfront mansion, and moving a small flying company's gear out of one hangar into another one at Vancouver airport, which involved handling a lot of small aircraft components. Clem also picked up the odd day of work doing various office tasks for different companies.
Before we had left New Zealand, I'd received a message on Couchsurfing regarding work. I'd posted on Couchsurfing the rough details of our trip which is how we managed to get a host for our first few days. Someone had sent me a message telling me to get in touch with them once we were in Vancouver with regards to call centre work. At the time I'd sort of written them off as one of those door to door type direct marketing companies where I'd be stuck cold-calling people all day trying to get them to donate to charity and getting paid by pure commission. They'd left me the name of the company and a brief description of what they were all about. The reason they'd sent me a message was because their call centre serviced their Australian customers and they were after people with Aussie and Kiwi accents for authenticity.
In the end after reading through information about them and hearing about some of the things they offered ($13.50 an hour as a training wage for the first month and $16.50 after the first month plus an incentive structure based on performance, free beer every 2nd friday, only taking inbound calls) I decided to give them a call and started working there in April, approximately one month after arriving. Not long afterwards, Clem was assigned to a job through one of her temp agencies who liked her enough to keep having her back and ended up there full time for the rest of our time in Vancouver. Essentially within our first month, we had everything we needed to be comfortable for the entirety of our 7 month stay in Van, not too shabby.
In our first weeks of Canadian life, we were met with Canadian loveliness in all its glory, managed to get ourselves set up in permanent accommodation with ease and had no trouble finding work. Massive thanks to everyone who helped us out in our early days in Vancouver especially Taz for hosting us in Richmond for our first week, Tyler for being awesome and welcoming us into an awesome house and Brendan along with all of the fantastic work people who made my life in Vancouver very easy.
My next post here will be about call centre life in Vancouver, with the world's largest junk removal company.
We had temporary accommodation sorted courtesy of Couchsurfing (Shout out to Taz, the best host anyone could ask for) which gave us a bit of freedom in our first few days to get the rest sorted at a relatively leisurely pace.
We were exceptionally lucky with how smoothly everything went for us after our arrival. Our first real day, we stopped in at a Service Canada centre and had our S.I.N's (basically Canada's version of a social security number) sorted in less than an hour, got bank accounts set up through TD who offer 0 fees (North American banks suck for fees, they sting you wherever they can) for the first 6 months on any account for people who are new to Canada and started our search for permanent housing.
After combing through padmapper, kijiji and craiglist for suitable places within our price range that looked to be in accessible areas of the city, we fired off a few messages and setup a couple of viewing times. Everything had been so easy for us so far and everyone had lived up to the stereotype of Canadians being nice that we were beginning to get suspicious. Surely, something had to give sooner or later. It didn't. The first place we viewed was perfect for us. A downstairs but not basement suite with our own bathroom, kitchen and well sized bedroom and our own outdoor access in a house with 5 other people. Basically it was a private space with the option to come and go through our own door without having to go into any of the rest of the house if we didn't want to, but also living with a bunch of great people so plenty of social opportunities too.
The next day we officially moved into our new place which came unfurnished. Again resorting to kijiji and craigslist we quickly found someone who sold ex-display and ex-hotel beds on the cheap and was willing to drop us off a queen mattress and boxspring to our door for about $100. The bed was perfect, the mattress super comfortable and clean and the guy who dropped it off helped us get it set up as well.
With long term accommodation sorted in a spot that was 5 minutes walk from the skytrain (Vancouver's metro train network, basically their version of a subway) and only a handful of stops from downtown, the only thing left to do was get work sorted. Clem and I both signed up to a few recruitment agencies with the hope of finding the odd bit of temp work to pay our bills until we found something long term.
I got in touch with a moving company and as well as a bit of labour work through agencies, I got the odd day on the trucks. Highlights from that experience include moving a multi-millionaire out of a North Vancouver waterfront mansion, and moving a small flying company's gear out of one hangar into another one at Vancouver airport, which involved handling a lot of small aircraft components. Clem also picked up the odd day of work doing various office tasks for different companies.
Before we had left New Zealand, I'd received a message on Couchsurfing regarding work. I'd posted on Couchsurfing the rough details of our trip which is how we managed to get a host for our first few days. Someone had sent me a message telling me to get in touch with them once we were in Vancouver with regards to call centre work. At the time I'd sort of written them off as one of those door to door type direct marketing companies where I'd be stuck cold-calling people all day trying to get them to donate to charity and getting paid by pure commission. They'd left me the name of the company and a brief description of what they were all about. The reason they'd sent me a message was because their call centre serviced their Australian customers and they were after people with Aussie and Kiwi accents for authenticity.
In the end after reading through information about them and hearing about some of the things they offered ($13.50 an hour as a training wage for the first month and $16.50 after the first month plus an incentive structure based on performance, free beer every 2nd friday, only taking inbound calls) I decided to give them a call and started working there in April, approximately one month after arriving. Not long afterwards, Clem was assigned to a job through one of her temp agencies who liked her enough to keep having her back and ended up there full time for the rest of our time in Vancouver. Essentially within our first month, we had everything we needed to be comfortable for the entirety of our 7 month stay in Van, not too shabby.
In our first weeks of Canadian life, we were met with Canadian loveliness in all its glory, managed to get ourselves set up in permanent accommodation with ease and had no trouble finding work. Massive thanks to everyone who helped us out in our early days in Vancouver especially Taz for hosting us in Richmond for our first week, Tyler for being awesome and welcoming us into an awesome house and Brendan along with all of the fantastic work people who made my life in Vancouver very easy.
My next post here will be about call centre life in Vancouver, with the world's largest junk removal company.
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