Too bad they didn't fire him... but this is almost as good. (And I'm sure he had no choice....)

I don't have phone fear if I am calling for someone else or on business, for some reason

I wish I had this. Whenever I have to call someone on business, I have to psych myself up for it, even if they're expecting the call. Some of it is being afraid of sounding like a dork.

I remember once when I was doing cold calling that I had to hang up immediately, because the recipient was a mildly peeved Englishman, and the sound of a sexy, snarky British voice made my brain lock up.

Michael Brown's going to spend more time with his family: [link]

the sound of a sexy, snarky British voice made my brain lock up.

They could just take the country right back if they simply exploited this fact, couldn't they?

I'm not really afraid of the phone.

That first job at the sandwich shop I was given the job of making collection calls for bad checks. I was the youngest and least experienced and I had to call people up and threaten them.

This actually served me well when I worked at the land surveryor's and had to threaten people with liens and other nastiness if they didn't pay up.

I don't have phone fear so much as phone white-hot-loathing. I can count the number of people with whom I can easily talk on the phone on one hand, and I'm related to all of them.

If I have to call someone I don't know, especially about anything even vaguely bureaucratic, I write down what I'm going to say before I call.

I've had a ton of jobs, mostly because I temped my way through college/grad school/shortly after grad school. Some of my non-temp jobs:

RA
Residence Hall Director
Maintenance Sec'y
Assist. Theatre Mgr/House Mgr.
Retail (Lane Bryant mostly, also Michael's)
Sec'y for Industrial Real Estate brokers
Reservations agent for a hotel chain
Substitute Teacher

Some of my temp jobs:

Folding turtlenecks at a dept. store during a sale
Checking in better bags and putting security tags on them at a dept. store
Answering phones at a jewelry store
Clowning for the grand opening of a drug store
All kinds of office work
Inventory at a fasteners place (I counted a shitload of bolts)

I don't have phone fear so much as phone white-hot-loathing. I can count the number of people with whom I can easily talk on the phone on one hand, and I'm related to all of them.

Jess is me.

I also have mild phone fear. I hate any time I have to make call to someone I don't know. Incoming calls don't bother me so much.

In the crappy job department, my first real job (not counting summers spent helping my grandfather on his orchard) was at BK. It sucked royally and being my first job I didn't realize just how much they were screwing us over.

1) Schedules were only made a day in advance (unless the regional manager was coming in for an inspection, in which case they'd be made two weeks in advance as required, but said schedules were generally meaningless) which meant good luck making any sort of social plans. When I did have a day off, I'd have to call in to find out when I was working the next day because of the whole day before thing.

2) When things were slow, we were required to punch out and go on break, but we couldn't leave before the end of our scheduled shift and would have to punch back in when things got busy again. People sometimes had to just sit in the break room for up to an hour at a time.

3) If you were on closing crew, you had to punch out at your scheduled time, regardless of whether you had finished closing out the store. However, you could not leave until you finished closing procedures and cleaning.

This was above and beyond the normal crappiness that comes from working in fastfood.

My second job was working as a ride operator for Six Flags (which I repeated the next summer)

Third job was working at Toys R Us as a floor stocker (and eventually cashier, which I hated). I started about 2 weeks before Christmas.

Fourth job was working in the Men's Department at Montgomery Ward. After my second Christmas there, I vowed I would never work another Christmas in retail again. I quit there to work for my current company shortly before Wards went belly-up.