Is "Free Labour" acceptable?
Is "practice session" makes it a valid reason for non-employees to go through all potential client's number and send the news out with our own credits and our personal number?
Is it okay for a company to make you "practice your cold-calling skills with real customers" by using our own expenses and not getting paid to do so because it was just a PRACTICE session? Sounds complicated? Let me write about my experience.
So I saw this company's Ads (#Dahmakan) mentioning that they are searching for part-timers/students/anyone who want to work FLEXIBLE in the MALAYSIA FASTESR GROWING STARTUP. Since I was in my break, I got curious and applied that particular job. That particular job is Telemarketing.
Everything was ok from the start, they invited everyone to come over for a briefing session. So there was like about 20 people attended that briefing. So, the person in charge (PIC) gave us a simple breifing about the job, the company history and even brought us to look around their dispatching area. After that, they made us to practice our job with each other.
They gave us scripts and guidelines on how to do our job. We did practice with each other so it's still fine. Then, the weird part hits in, they start giving us the access to the official file of the job and instructed us to start calling potential clients in the listing as a PRACTICE for the job.
Everyone was shocked, but no way out because they felt like it's impolite to just reject this real "practice" session. The PIC start to label who is responsible to call which clients. They gave us 3 phone numbers as a start, after we finished calling 3, they'll continue adding on to extra 12 more phone numbers! We didn't even consented to do the calling! We were instructed to do accordingly.
I felt like they are using free manpower, I felt like it's unfair that I am using my own credits and expenses to reduce the workload of the comapny. So I just left. I didn't manage to voice out at the venue, I chickened myself away because I felt something wasn't right.
Lets do some maths. If 20 people called 12 numbers, the company is able to save 240 number / workload from us without any payment (maybe their payment was their free lunch? Is this even legit? But if you're official working for them, you get paid for 10MYR per hour!).
I would like to ask the public is this actually okay for companies to just use an excuse of "practice" to lessen their workload? Please give me comments about this. I don't want any other people falling for this "practice session" because it seems so glamorous and attractive to work with one of the Fastest Growing Startup without compensation because its just a "practice". I am very sure that this "briefing" session is not just my batch, they got lots of batch coming in time-to-time.
Assuming they said they select us all as employees, but we never agreed to take this job and never volunteered to do the practice calling with our own expenses to your potential customers.
P.s. I have valid proof that we really did call and message potential clients for their service. What do y'all think?
Search