You never stop phone banking

I spent this afternoon phone banking for John Kitzhaber's gubernatorial campaign. Keep in mind now, I haven't done this kind of work since the late 90s, fresh out of high school and looking for a job. I started with the now defunct Griggs Anderson research, my first really office cubicle style job. You know, where we weren't allowed to have our coats on our chairs and resulted in $60 of my Christmas money being stolen. Good memories there.

The job itself was deadening, I spent the day on the phone calling busy IT people and asking them to answer my survey questions. Now I'm on the receiving end of such solicitations, except all done online, blessedly. And during my employment there I was hung up on, yelled at, swore at, all in the name of gathering research about how people use computers. And I'm not going to lie here, I didn't learn any life lessons during that phase. I'm just as bad as the people I used to call now. See, I'm very busy playing Civ and watching Arrested Development so I simply do not have time to talk.

Yeah.

Just after my time with Griggs Anderson, I moved on to OSPIRG. And if I thought calling IT managers for $7.00 an hour was soul destroying, imagine what happened when I made no money for a group that proclaimed to have everyone's best interests at heart. See, OSPIRG and their ilk don't advertise this, but they don't pay very well if you don't meet your extremely high commission barrier. This meant that for 80 hours worth of work, I'd get paid $95 some weeks. No promised hourly wage. If you look on their site now it says Campaign staff will make $400-$600 each week. Yeah, sure.

So how did I end up phone banking for Kitzhaber's campaign? I showed up willing to work. And comparatively speaking it was a far more pleasant experience. Except people are horribly rude, no doubt because they are very busy watching Netflix movies and cleaning their houses. But since it's a candidate I support and believe in, it's worth it to me. And if all they need right now is for me to turn up and call a bunch of registered Democrats, that's enough to keep my soul intact.

So roll on Tuesday and the primaries. Go Kitzhaber! Do what McCall couldn't.