Day in the Life of a Chinese Telemarketing Company

 

(Translator's preface:  This is one section of a 170-page report prepared two years ago under the title "Chinese Society Survey Research" and looking at the conditions faced by different sections of workers in China. Its editors are quite clear that a restoration of capitalism has occurred in China and that workers are exploited and denied the rights due to them in a socialist society. I have added several footnotes to explain some of the words and phrases used by the worker who is relating this particular section. The graphic above is from the Chinese website 是小资，还是脑力劳动无产者 | 少年中国评论 (youngchina.review) and an article there titled "Is it the petty-bourgeoisie or the brain-power proletariat?")

Editor's note: This article gives a brief overview of the basics of a 50-person sized telemarketing company. Through this article, we can get a general idea of the problems of this type of small sales company that exists in large numbers: long working hours, severe oppression, widespread illegal matters, and a class consciousness that has not yet been awakened in most employees.

It is common for service workers, brainwashed by success stories, poisoned by chicken soup texts[1] and bound by consumerism, to be somewhat less aware and less organised than manufacturing workers, so the awakening of class consciousness among the employees of such companies tends to come later. However, it is clear that the author of this article possesses a clear class consciousness, which also suggests that even in such industries, advanced proletarians are beginning to emerge gradually.

I. Basic information

I am a native of Henan, living in the countryside since I was a child, an only child, and my parents are engaged in farming.

After I graduated from college in 2013, my first job was as a down-loader in a machinery factory in my hometown, mainly cutting, bending and punching steel plates. I was not satisfied with the 2,000 yuan salary in the machine shop and hoped to earn more money to change my family's plight. Soon after, I quit my job and moved to the big city to look for a way out. I joined a telemarketing company in Guangzhou because I had heard people say that sales could make a lot of money. It was a small company, and in this company, I felt the pressure of capital on us.

The size of the company was more than 40 people, including the boss, and there were four business groups, each with a team leader who was responsible for coordinating about ten people under him. The company's business was very simple. The boss distributes telephone resources to each group, and each group member gets a list of names and makes telephone calls to contact customers and sell products. The team leader assists the team members by teaching them sales techniques, helping them to upgrade and maintain their customers, enlivening the atmosphere, etc.

Initially there was some novelty when I started working at the company, but after a few days I fell into a boring repetition of work.

Every day the work is a repetition of a boring process.

I arrive at 8.30am for the morning meeting, where the leader rewards and punishes the work done yesterday. The rewards and punishments were simple and brutal: those who completed their tasks were given money directly, those who did not were criticised and hung, and there were even corporal punishments, such as push-ups for boys and squats for girls. The internet often reveals all kinds of strange corporal punishment, such as slapping each other and learning how to crawl, which are not uncommon in this industry.

After the corporal punishment, the team leader routinely gives everyone a chicken blood injection[2] and pours chicken soup texts. This kind of stuff was a little refreshing at first two times, but then there was nothing left but disgust.

The job started at 9 o'clock and consisted of making phone calls to customers to sell products. Out of a hundred calls, ninety or so are rudely disconnected, and the fragile mind is constantly broken. The whole morning was spent on the phone constantly. It was hard to get through to 12 o'clock, so we were happy to leave work for lunch, followed by a rare lunch break of one and a half hours.

The lunch break ends at 1.30 and the whole staff play games or do a group dance, which is done to wake us up so we don't slack off. At two o'clock the afternoon officially begins, still making phone calls to clients. Repetition after repetition, dull and boring. There was no skill involved and the whole thing became an appendage to the job.

In the afternoon, you have to keep calling from two o'clock to six o'clock. Imagine what kind of torture it is to be on the phone all day. Dinner was served at six, and after a short break, the party started at seven. At the party, the leaders take us through a summary of the day's takeaways, with those who have achieved sharing their success stories and learning to exchange sales techniques. At around 7.30pm, we start the evening work and continue to call and sweep customers. At 9:30 pm, those who have completed their tasks can leave work, and those who have not completed their sales tasks work overtime until 11:00 pm.

Such is the life of a day, from 8.30am to 9.30pm (or even 11pm), all the time on the phone, apart from meals, meetings and a few breaks. And all the calls, the vast majority of them, were hung up on. Boring, dull and torturous. It is rare to have a happy moment in a day, and perhaps the happiest time is when you go for a late dinner with your colleagues after work.

II. Pay situation

In such a boring life, our salary is also pitifully low. We are paid a base salary plus commission, with a base salary of 3,000 and a commission of ten points on sales performance. The company team leader is also paid a base salary plus commission, with a base salary of 5,000 and a commission of three points of the team's overall performance. If the team leader also does business himself, he also has 10 points of commission for his own business.

As for overtime pay, that is a matter of legend, in law but not in reality. Apart from overtime pay, there are many things that companies do that are illegal. In fact, this is often the case with such small companies, where violations are everywhere, and I will list them roughly as follows: (1) The source of telephone numbers is usually obtained illegally by the owner through certain channels. (2) No labour agreement is signed with the employee, and no social security is bought for the employee, and the employee is usually also made to sign a waiver of social security agreement. Based on an average salary of 4,000 yuan per month, the company can make an illegal profit of 800 yuan per person per month by paying less social security, which is 40,000 yuan for 50 people, or 480,000 yuan a year. (3) Cash wages are generally given to employees as a means of tax evasion. (4) Corporal punishment and even verbal abuse of employees is common. (5) All that is needed to dismiss an employee is a word from the boss or team leader, and there is no compensation for dismissing the employee, and the employee's performance commission or even normal salary is not paid after dismissal. In this way, the company deducts the hard-earned money of the employees every year.

However, although the law is serious, labour disputes are not much, because in the telemarketing industry, employees generally do not have a strong sense of rights, the general staff will not have any disputes with the company.

III. Preliminary analysis

Inside the company, the boss has absolute authority and is the ruling class (bourgeoisie) of our company. The team leader pleases the boss at the top and oppresses the staff at the bottom. His salary is a bit higher than the ordinary staff, but it is also difficult to buy a house and settle down, and he belongs to the middle class which is dependent on the bourgeoisie. I think they are actually the proletariat, but their consciousness is brainwashed by the boss. We, the employees, are at the bottom of the pile and tend to go against the grain. It doesn't matter if the staff are united or not, most of them still have a good relationship in private, but there is no sense of rebellion. One reason is the status quo of the industry, the default unspoken rules, and the second is that we have been brainwashed by the corporate culture of these companies, and our class consciousness has not awakened. They have never thought of using legal means to protect their rights, because the jobs they do are not particularly bright jobs, and they are harassed during the phone calls rather than directly at work. The employees themselves are actually disgusted with the work they do, but in order to make quick money, they are greedy for comfort, and they are not willing to get steady and reliable jobs to make real money.

Employees like us, who save money every month, can only live at the bottom of the ladder.

I was doing very well because I was doing well personally and I got over 7,000 a month. Every month after I got paid, I would send home 2000 to my parents. The rest of the money, rent 700, daily meals 900 (30 per day), smoking 300 per month (10 yuan a box per day), other expenses almost nothing. Because I'm frugal and want to save up for the future. I spend very little on socialising and only go out for a meal with friends once a month, spending a few hundred dollars at most. I don't buy a lot of household items, and when I do, I try to buy cheap ones, a few dozen a month. Basically, the monthly fixed expenditure is more than 4,000 yuan (including 2,000 yuan for my parents). In a year, I can save about 40,000 yuan (not including the amount given to my parents).

There are actually not many employees like me. Firstly, many colleagues do not earn a high income, basically a base salary; this part of the people resigned or don’t dare hand in their own resignation. Staff mobility is particularly large, in a few months they will be replaced by a group of fresh blood. In addition, many colleagues will go to KTV, bars and bathing centres to spend money after they are paid, especially those with good performance in that month. Some of them will also buy things they like, such as designer clothes, etc. In this way, many colleagues cannot save much money in a year, and some even have to borrow money for the New Year.

Such small companies exist in large numbers in China, and many of them are in the grey areas and on the edge of the law, not only exploiting the rights of their employees, but also defrauding their clients. The company instils in us a wolfish culture, consumerism and hedonism, which leads to employees losing their sense of morality by any means in order to perform, losing their sense of rights in the general competition, becoming numb in the illusion of getting rich, and becoming penniless in the atmosphere of hedonism, with the end result that employees become more dependent on the company.

 

 

 

 

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[1] “Chicken soup text” is an internet buzz word for articles designed to inspire people, but which often leads to a mind-numbing outcome.  They are often seen on popular platforms like QQ. Many of those who do pyramid schemes or disguised pyramid schemes also give very positive speeches, but their content is false and misleading.

[2] Chicken blood is an expression of behaviour that is used to satirise the person's sudden emotional exuberance towards a particular person or thing. It originated in the 1980s from a health care method called "chicken blood therapy", in which the blood of a year-old rooster was drawn out and injected into a person. It was popular among the old cadres. People who had chicken blood injected into them had a red face and were said to be mentally and physically stimulated.