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3G, 4G, what's the diff?
By adamg on Mon, 11/28/2011 - 8:24am
Sounds like some salespeople at the Verizon store in Harvard Square need some training.
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Comments
The Economy Is Better Than You Are Being Told
These two quick stories are further proof that the labor market is better around here than we are being led to beleive. The idiocy of the two interactions proves that employers are throwing anyone they can up against customers, thus even the Walking Stupid are finding jobs. It is the kind of proof where you know you are in a real estate bubble when private developers start proposing new developments in Brockton. The tip of the spear for customer service in the area is wearing down in some ares of Boston that the $10 to $12 per hour job, not that this is even a living age,is being left vacant.
Nope
It just shows that huge corporations will hire the cheapest labor they can find. They prefer to hire the "walking stupid" and then not train them because they are expendible, rather than invest in anybody knowlegeble who they can't just "excess" whenever they want to pump their stock price. If you go into a cel phone store, there are usually a number of employees - mostly to prevent shrinkage - who don't know crap. Two idiots are better than one competent person.
The people who know this stuff are out there pounding the pavement, but these places won't give them a second look.
Prudential/Ameriprise/Commonwealth
Do this too.
It's a sales commission job (IE legal pyramid scheme). Only a few can make ends meat doing these jobs; the rest are young, starry eyes and gullible to the fortunes they're all going to make with hard work and sweat of the brow.
They usually don't last long, since commission is your wage. Once their friends and family are used up, their customer pool withers away and they're out looking for a new job. Corp and the franchise owner, on the other hand, got quite a few new customers for little, if any training.
Insurance, IRA's, cell contacts; pretty much any salesman job.
I'm suffering from . . . .
. . . technology fatigue anyway. I don't care to get the "latest" anything anymore. Sick of it.
"Obsolete 3G"
Heh, just a little smug there. 4G is in Boston, but 3G is still going to be king nation wide for the next few years until 4G is rolled out. Furthermore, 4G is a marketing term, not a real standard.
As for walking into a VZW store, what did you expect? They frequently will not talk about upcoming phones (even a week away), nor will they talk to you about the cons of a phone. Their sole job is to make sure you walk out with something, so they get commission.
Never go into one unless you already know what you want. Even then they can be a pain. VZW sent me a coupon for $30 off renewing my contract (on top of their other discounts and incentives), and the local store wouldn't take it. The coupon had their address printed right on it too as my "local shop" with the suggestion to go there, and they wouldn't honor it!
That's fine, they just lost on a phone sale and a 2 year contract. I told them fine, I'm doing it online and filling a complaint about the store. Manager didn't seem too pleased, but it was his fault in the first place. VZW said they can't buck corp incentives like that, so hopefully the store was reprimanded.
Smug as a Bug in a Research University
Maybe Greenspun needs to read _Nickel and Dimed_, or better yet, spend a few weeks as a service worker.
I can't get behind a rich computer guy talking shit about working class folks from a blog at Harvard. This is hubris.
That's Greenspun's schtick
He spends a fair bit of time reminding us how much smarter he is than the others with whom the unfortunate necessities of life force him to come into contact.
Calling the average person stupid is not only unattractive, it's just plain wrong. The average person is average. If you want to rant about how stupid the average person is, what you're really doing is ranting about how smart you are.
OK, Phil, I'm smart, too. On those tests, I test out at almost three standard deviations above the mean. I've got a fancy graduate degree, a nice cushy job, and all sorts of other goodies. You know why? Because I'm lucky. When they were handing out parents, I chose smart ones. Being smart isn't an achievement to be proud of, it just is.