I did telemarketing for years, starting at the age of 16, just selling steak knives to old people. Old people go through a weird amount of steak knives. I also sold straight meat over the telephone.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I sold steaks over the phone in Omaha, Nebraska. Marbling, fantastic. That's what makes a great steak; a lot of people don't know.
Older Americans are perfect telemarketing customers, analysts say, because they are often at home, rely on delivery services, and are lonely for the companionship that telephone callers provide.
I did all kinds of things as a young person to try to make money. I had a chicken operation - I sold chickens. I can remember going to high school football games as a ten-year-old and gathering Coca-Cola bottles, 'cause you'd turn them in and get a nickel. I wanted not to remain idle.
The worst job I ever had was as a telemarketer for, oh, I don't know, I think I made it about 90 minutes. I quit before lunch. I went in around 10:30 or 11 and said, 'I can't do this.' It was horrific. I had too many people yell at me within that 90 minutes to be able to continue.
From a relatively early age I got interested in business.
I was a dog groomer. I delivered radiators; I was a photography producer. I typed classified ads for many years. It was my longest term job - years of typing classified ads while I was in bands.
There was a telemarketing job one summer in high school that I was rejected for. I still walk by the building that I actually had the interview in. It's still in New York, and I always think about that job and why I didn't get it.
As the years passed, and I was nine, 10, 11 years old, it became obvious I was going to start up a business of some sort.
I started in the supermarket business in the early '70s. And by '75, '76, I realized you don't have a business unless you own the real estate.
I was a telemarketer in my senior year at high school. I had to sell prosthetic limbs to paralysed veterans. I was making 150 bucks a week and it was horrible.