The first rains of the season have come and passed. A bit early, but it happened. L.A. drivers skid, slid and collid over the slippery glaze of rain water, oil, gasoline, brake fluid, and other assorted engine residues. It even smeeled different afterwards, sort of like the earth released a gasp of Vic's Vapo Rub. Like those now long gone rain clouds so is my first day as wage slave at Teletech.

I sit in a classroom of about 40 people. Strike that, 40 men. Will the 2 women trianees and woman trainer please excuse me. I sit in a classroom of 40 men who are lorded over by four trainers, three of which stand in the backroom and do nothing, save the occasional humorless wise-crack. The measure of corporate upward mobility seems to be how many people can be promoted into a position of negligible power without unbalancing the payscale of executive management and leaving the stock alone. Thus, the efficiency of three trainers who do nothing. I was waiting for a good cop/bad cop display at the very least, and suspect I'll be getting one later this week.

The air conditioning had only on/off controls. The state of the room was either fucking cold or stuffy and warm. I guess one of the trainers that didn't train (what are they then?) kept throwing the aircon. off whenever he saw members of the class start looking around for knives to gut him open and crawl in out of the cold.
One method of training was to put us into groups and have us come up with a team name and logo. I still don't know what this accomplished. I let my four teammates name the team and draw our logo. We became the "Fantastic Four." Which one of us wasn't fantastic? The logo was the #4 with a circle around it and arrows sticking out in the primary directions of the compas. On my own I came up with "InspyraTech," for the team name. For the logo, a spiral made of phone chord with an arrow head pointing outward and a phone jack inward. Then I added a slogan for good measure, "We screw you around in circles." Nobody would go for it on my team. I think I was the "Unfantastic One."

I have fifteen minutes to get the hell out of here and do some writing and coffee drinking for 90 minutes before having to come back and get ready for another magical day at TeleTech where the trainers are so brainwashed they believe in the greatness of the telecommunications outsource company they work for. One trainer, the one speaking and training, actually said, "TeleTech is one of the best places for this multi-racial equal oppurtunity thing. They don't care about what color you are, it's all 'What have you done for TeleTech today?' So if you want to get promoted it's all up to you because the oppurtunities are there." Sickening display. He went on to prove his point by saying that there are three people who head various departments, one heads HR, one heads 4 different projects and one heads the Worldnet contract out of the corporate offices in Denver, and two of those people are women. Wow!!! Ooooo! Aaaahhhh! Two women? What does this have to do with the equality of the races/ And wghat does this have to do with who has the real power? Who is exective management? Who is the CEO of TeleTech? Who are the CEO's of those who hire TeleTech? Well, AT&T's CEO is a white male. I'm betting that TeleTech's is too. In fact, almost all the power positions at TeleTech, I'll wager dollars to lumps pf shit, are held by white men. Okay, I'm a white guy so why am I complaining? I'm not. But at least I don't view the world as having arrived at equality because teleTech gives some woman a shit job a the head of 4 different projects. "Thanks! Only four projects to head? I can take more. Please give me more work." The trainers are sad robots engineered and designed by TeleTech to last and build new robots.

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