Vignettes

So, I’m at work right now. I’ve got some down time while I wait for my calls to connect. It’s the eternal problem with business-to-business (b2b) jobs; you always spend more than half your actual time on the phone negotiating with receptionists, dialling your way through phone menu… (why isn’t there ever a “… dial 7 if you’re a market researcher trying to find an able and willing respondent…”?) and being told that the head of Marketing / Sales / Human Ressources / etc.. isn’t available till next week. However, surprisingly, companies will tell you  a lot if you just ask persistently and politely. 

Gave up on market survey by interviewing; sales figures simply aren’t accessible that way. Mini-qualitative investigation didn’t yield other than expected results based on websurvey findings. Well, it’s interesting anyway… I do need to practice doing qualitative interviews some more though. They’re supposed to be my forte as an anthropologist(-in-the-making).

From April 06 till March 08, I worked part time as a phone interviewer at (the) Nielsen Company. The time I’ve spent on vacation and in Finland aside. It’s probably been about 17 months, and I’ve typically been coming in twice a week or so and staying between 4 and 5 hours with one thirty mint break. 68 weeks, 9 hours weekly makes 612 hours. In 612 hours, you can learn quite a bit about random people. Or at least a lot about their tobacco habits, what phone books they have t home and at the office, what they think about whaling and if they’ve seen the commercial with the guy and the stuff advertising that product… on a scale from 1 to 5.

It’s was an OK job. It can be boring, but at times there are at least moderately interesting surveys, but most of all, it’s just a blur. I have to admit to feeling a little bit overqualified for this job (even though I wasn’t when I was hired), considering the fact that I’m about four months away from handing in the final anthropology work for my Bachelor’s …. on consumption. Sigh. I can’t say I haven’t learnt a thing or two from being here – I definitely have. Interview I just feel like it’s about time to move on. I want to get into qualitative market research – assisting with focus groups, interview transcription, or just something. I am sick of phone interviews.

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