#241 Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (17th October 2019)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland. This is Let Me Bore You To Sleep. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes.

I'm trying to think, what else do I normally say? Let me bore you to sleep, Jason Newland, the website. That's it really. So for those that have never listened before, this is just me talking about stuff on this podcast.

Sometimes I talk about my personal life. Sometimes I talk about stuff that's happened in the past. Sometimes I will read out of a magazine.

Sometimes I just make up a lot of stuff. It's all kind of a bit of a mixture really. I'm feeling quite excited today because I got some new socks yesterday and I'm looking forward to wearing a pair.

So what I'm going to do today is, oh yeah, if you do like this podcast, I do have other podcasts as well and that are aimed at sleeping. I'm pretty much, I'd say majority of people that listen to me, listen to me for sleeping issues. And then there's the people that listen to me for the anxiety, stress, panic attack podcast as well.

But ultimately, it's the sleeping ones that seem to be the most popular. So it's what I'm kind of getting to be known for. So yeah, I do have other podcasts, Deep Sleep Whisper Hypnosis, Sleep Hypnosis Weekly, which I get a new recording released every Monday.

And these Let Me Bore You To Sleep. When I'm on a roll, I generally release one every day. I have periods when I don't make anything for a while, but generally try to make them fairly regularly.

And on my website, there is a testimonial page where you can read what other people have said. You could also add your own testimonial, letting others and myself, of know how what I do is a benefit to you. So what I'm going to do today is I'm going to have a look at The Big Issue, which is a magazine aimed, which is usually known that homeless people sell them.

But it's not just for homeless people that sell them. People that are having, I guess, financial difficulties. But the idea behind it is, well, I've got to know one of the ladies who sell it a little bit.

And she said it costs her £1.20 to buy The Big Issue. And she sells it for £2.50. So she gets to keep the profits that she has to pay out to buy The Big Issue to start with. So I'm going to have a little look.

She keeps trying to sell me, sell it to me. And I normally say no, but I'll buy her a coffee or sandwich or something. Because I just can't be bothered to carry it around really.

But this is, it's kind of aimed at helping homeless people really. That's the kind of the bottom line. But not everybody that sells it is homeless.

But being homeless doesn't necessarily mean living on the streets. As I'm sure you know, it's sleeping on someone's couch. Again, just not having your own place, not having your own home.

I've been there myself a few times. Never lived on the streets. I spent one night on the street actually, back in 1995.

But other than that, I've been homeless in the context of not having a home, living on someone's, sleeping on someone's floor, you know. But now I'm in a very good position. So very fortunate to have my own home.

So my heart does go out a bit to people that have housing issues. Because I spent time over quite a few times over the years with housing issues. And even living in places there's housing issues.

If you're sharing a house with a bunch of people and perhaps it's not quite as perfect, perfect situation as it might be. And so, I'm going to read a little bit out of this. It's usually got interviews with famous people and stuff like that.

And just, I used to buy it when I was in London actually, because it used to have, I can't remember what it was in there that I liked, but it was something I quite liked in London. Plus, if you travel through London, like tube stations, train stations, you see about 6,000 big issue sellers on every journey. You know, eventually I think it's a hypnotic thing.

It's like, just you give up in the end. Like, I'll have one, even if you don't particularly want it. And she speaks to this lady, I forget what her name is, but she said to me that not many people really buy the big issue anymore.

And I said, it's probably just, it's not a personal thing to her. It's kind of the digital age. Less and less people are buying magazines and papers even that are made of paper.

They'd rather, you know, read it there perhaps on their tablet or their phone. But yes, I'm not quite sure how they're going to, they've not kind of caught up with the times yet. This, the people that produce the big issue, it's, there probably will come a time.

And also with the society trying to, I don't know who, the bank or the government or whatever, trying to make it more of a cashless society, which will put even more demands, I guess, more pressure on people selling things in the street like the big issue. But we shall see. We shall see.

And, oh yeah, I don't know if I mentioned it yesterday. See, my podcasts are all on Spreaker. You can, you can see them.

They've been um shared on Spotify, iTunes, podcasts, just various different podcast hosts that you can listen to your podcasts on. There's lots of different places, you know, there's loads of them. And every, I suppose everyone's got their own particular preference.

For example, some people like Stitcher. Some people like TuneIn. Some people like Podcast Addict.

Some people prefer Podchaser. You know, it's, I'm quite pleased that I remember those. So there's quite a few.

Now, I started keeping a track of my stats on the website. I spent hours doing that. And I thought, this is good.

I can kind of go on there and have a look and see how it's going. And then two days ago, I was at 517,000 downloads. And I wake up not yesterday, but the day before, which would be, it's Thursday today.

Yesterday was Wednesday. So that would be Tuesday. I woke up, went on to Spreaker, and just refreshed the stats.

And it had gone down to 505,000. So I'd lost, how was it, 505, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. So it's 12.

Is that right? 12,000 downloads missing from the stats. And then I looked at some of the days, because the day before, I'd had 3,032 downloads. And it had gone down to about 2,400 downloads.

And I'm thinking, uh-huh, what's gone on? And I couldn't figure it out. I haven't put a minus. How can it go down? It just doesn't make sense.

And there was a message from Spreaker for all to read. And it said that they are now tightening up their stats to, so they can become a member of an organization, which, like some professional organization. But in order to do that, they have to give exact stats.

So I'm guessing before, they were just estimating. So now, I guess it's fairly difficult to, for them to perhaps see exactly, because the amount of different podcast hosts. So I lost 12,000 downloads.

And now they're not updating until the day after now. So I can't see what the total is until the next day. Before, they used to update continuously.

So I'm now getting less downloads than I did daily, which is a bit annoying. So it's not a huge amount, but it's still... Before, when I was perhaps getting 3,000, it's now 2,500. Well, 500 is a lot to lose, isn't it? That's quite a big percentage.

And I think the first time I noticed it was because on Tuesday, well, on the Monday, I'd reached 100,000 on one of my podcasts. Sleep hypnosis, sleep, I don't know if it's hypnosis for sleeping deeply, something like that, where all my sleep sessions are. And it was just reached 100,000 mark.

And the Deep Sleep Whisper Hypnosis podcast was about 87,000, I think. And this podcast to let me breathe to sleep was about 77,000 downloads. So I was looking forward to seeing these reached 100.

Well, on Tuesday, the one that was over 100 suddenly went down to about 96,000 or 97, something like that. The Deep Sleep one went down again, dropped down a few thousand. And the Let Me Boy To Sleep dropped down to about 70,000.

What? And I know it doesn't really matter technically, but it does to me. Because I like the idea of reaching a large audience. And it has grown, it's continuously growing.

But just to lose downloads, it's just annoying. So annoyed, so annoyed, walking around stamping my feet. So yeah, I took the stats off the website, because I couldn't be bothered to be doing them all.

So I just took them off. But I'm just about to reach the 100,000 on the Deep Sleep Hypnosis for Sleeping Deeply. So that podcast is only a little way off the 100,000 mark again, because that gets like four, five, 600 downloads a day on that podcast.

So it didn't take much to get it back to what it was. But maybe I should just not take so much notice of it all. I don't know.

It kind of, it interests me, you know, I'm interested in it. And I suppose that makes sense if I'm, this is my life's work, really. So it's kind of a good thing that I'm interested in what I'm doing.

But it was such a weird day yesterday, generally as well. And I've four days in a row now, I've woken up about seven o'clock. Today was a little bit earlier.

I think it was about 20 to seven or 10 to seven. And there's a complete reverse, like a 24 hour reverse. So instead of going to bed at seven, I'm waking up at seven.

But today, I'm not feeling as tired as what I was the last three days, which is pretty good. So it's, it also means that if I'm going to make recordings, I need to make them during the day. Because I can't wait till three o'clock in the morning because I'm in bed by then.

So I am recording this in my living room. And so there's a bit of background sound, not huge amounts. But I can't do something read in the shed because there's no light.

However, I did make a deep sleep whisper hypnosis recording this morning, when I got up. And I did that in the shed. I'll stop calling it a shed.

It's my recording studio, don't you know? My recording studio. My studio for recording myself. So and the background sounds is less in there, which makes sense really.

Because if you put a structure up inside another room, it's generally going to be quieter in there than it is outside of that structure. Just like it's quieter inside this building than it is outside this building. Or it's quieter inside the front door than outside the front door.

I don't mean actually inside the front door. You know, it's quite thin, I couldn't fit. But perhaps if I'm going to, I have started putting the soundproof foam on the outside.

And some of it has managed to stick. Some of it fell off. So what I'm going to do, I can't do it this week, because I don't have the money.

But next week, I'm going to get some proper, really strong adhesive. And also some, some soundproofing foam things that you can, that I'll put on the inside of it as well. So I'm hoping that next week, once I start doing that, and it's only a shed, it's not a big area.

You know, it's, to put foam on the outside of it, providing it sticks, would take me probably a couple of hours, if that. Because the pads or the soundproofing pad things, foam pads are quite, they're not tiny, you know, they're a fair size. So that'll be nice.

And I'll put it on the roof as well. And then I'll do some stuff on the inside. So I'm guessing just having that on the outside will reduce the sound coming in.

Because I think a lot of, sometimes the recording studios, people have a lot of the soundproofing inside, so as not to be heard outside. So they might have that recording studio in their house, so the neighbours don't hear the guitars and the drums and all that stuff. Well, I don't have guitars and drums, and I'm just talking.

So in a way, my only thing that I'm focusing on is not to, to calm or to quiet my voice from the outside, just to block out outside sounds from my voice when I'm talking. And I think it's going to be okay. So what I'll do next week, I'll get some, I already went into the shop to have a look at the stuff.

And I ended up getting Andre a witch, a witch's broom. Because it's Halloween soon. And that rhymes with broom, doesn't it? Soon.

And I thought, because Andre, whenever I'm doing something, he likes to grab hold of stuff. So if I'm cleaning the carpet, vacuuming, he likes to grab hold of the nozzle. Or if I'm brushing, you know, something, he likes to try and grab hold of the brush.

So I got this little kid's, it's like the old fashioned witch's broom. And I thought Andre would love that, because he's only little, but he had a little sniff of it, rubbed himself over the handle and then just walked off. So I don't know, I thought maybe it'd be good if I could get him to hold it and take a picture.

But I might have to wait till next week when I get the super glue. I can just glue it to his hands. Not really, not really, I'm joking.

I would not really do that. I used to dress him up. Last, well it wasn't last year, the year before, or the year before that, I got him a Santa Claus outfit.

But he just didn't like it. He really doesn't play along, you know. He looks so cute, with his little, it covered his body.

And again, super glue would have really come in handy that day. But it was just a little hat. Wouldn't refuse to wear the hat.

I suppose what I could have done, got some sellotape and just like sellotaped around the body. And just to sort of keep, not around his body, but around the little coat, just to keep it tight. So it stayed on him.

But I don't know, I just, the thing is, unlike a dog or a lot of animals, not a lot of animals, but some animals will just stay there long enough for you to take a picture. With him, most of the pictures I get to take is when he's asleep. Because as soon as he sees me taking a picture, he runs off or he stops doing what he was doing.

It's very self-conscious, very shy, very shy. He's a shy guy. He really is.

Let's have a quick little drink. All right. So the big issue cost me £2.50. And I was actually going to get the lady a cup of coffee.

And instead of buying the magazine, which would have cost me more. There was a queue, so I thought I'd just get the magazine instead. Okay.

So what's the front? It's got a picture of Big Ben. All right. I've not seen anything.

Oh, okay. It says here, a hand up, not a handout. That's what this magazine says.

This magazine was bought by your vendor for £1.25 and sold to you for £2.50. They are proudly working, not begging. Buy it, take it, spread the word. If you can't get hold of a copy of the magazine on a regular basis, you can subscribe to receive the Big Issue every week.

Bigissue.com forward slash subscribe. I suppose for people that don't get out of the house, but everywhere I've ever been in this country, there's Big Issue sellers everywhere. They just any town, there's loads.

But I suppose if someone's house bound, then that would make sense, I guess, to still buy it online. Read it online would perhaps be something they could do. Check out new cultural community space, South London.

No. Nope. Nope.

Sea Star Comedians at St Mungo's fundraiser gig for homeless people. So St Mungo's is a charity for homeless people. And I nearly worked for them years and years ago.

Years and years ago. Okay, so Wow. I've not seen anything that I wanted to read yet.

So, no. Superbike star Peter Hickman presented a £5,000 to a vendor to help him through leg op. Popped up a £5,000 Big Issue vendor Richie was reduced to tears after his British superbike hero, Peter Hickman turned up on his M&S Lincoln pitch to present him with a £5,000 check.

The 47 year old inspired his regular customers to raise £6,000 to help to cover his costs of living when he undergoes an operation to do something to his leg. I used to think, and maybe I'm wrong, but I seem to be wrong on this one. I thought that the Big Issue was something that people sold to get themselves back on their feet.

But I see people selling it and have been selling it for years and years and years and years and years. So it hasn't got them back on their feet, has it? Kind of, unless, I don't know. I thought it would have been a temporary thing for them to get help.

But there's this lady and she's still doing it. And she's only 22 or 23, something like that. And she's been doing it for years.

And she's, that's just what I thought. I mean, after I looked into it a long time ago, I'm sure it was like a short term, basically, instead of begging to offer someone something, that was the idea behind the magazine, is to give people something for the money they give to the person. You know, so someone gives them, instead of begging, you're actually offering something in return.

But because I thought about doing it myself once. Thank you for getting a smart meter. If you've got one of the 13 million smart meters already installed, you are helping to upgrade Britain's outdated energy system.

We'd just like to say thank you. See, I don't have a smart meter. Let me tell you why.

I don't want to be constantly seeing how much electricity I'm using. We really don't need that. I'm watching telly and just seeing the money, the charges going up.

And no, I don't see any personal benefit to myself for that. And if they were forced upon us, then the smart meter would be in the cupboard and be nowhere near me. I would never look at it.

I could see the benefit if you're on a page, go meter, and the meter's outside in the garden. It'd be handy to be able to just look and see what you've got left without going into the garden. Now that would be, you know, useful.

Especially if it's dark outside and you don't have a torch. So, but other than that, no. I actually did apply for a smart meter.

I didn't apply, but I inquired, or I might not have inquired. I phoned up the electric company about something else, I think. And they said, would you like a smart meter? And I said, for some reason, I thought, because if I think of a smartphone or stuff like that, I think it's in some way really cool and beneficial and useful.

I see no use to the smart meter other than feeling guilty for using electricity, probably, maybe. I don't know. But I said, yeah, all right then.

I didn't really know what it was, but it sounded like a smart idea. I was literally on the phone for nearly an hour, answering question after question after question, listening to script after script after script. And in the end, I said that I forget it.

It went on for ages and ages and ages. I couldn't be bothered. It was just, you know, it's like, am I, where's, you know, am I getting paid for this? No.

But you are, aren't you? The person on the phone, you're getting paid. See, those scripts in the old days, I'm going back to like 2000, there wasn't much in the way of, I guess, in a way, protecting the customer. The customer didn't have a huge amount of protection, which it's good they do now.

So that's what the scripts are for. So people, when you buy something online, whether it's car insurance or anything, they have to read you a bunch of waffle. And it's basically like a contract and you say yes and all that stuff.

Although they do send it to you email or post and you can read it through like we all read through the small print, don't we? And they actually, when I started selling insurance, car insurance, I'd do a quote for them. I'd say to them, do you want to pay that on card or direct debit? And they'd say, well, I didn't say I wanted it, did I? I said card or direct debit. They said, I don't, I don't know if I want it.

I said, card or direct debit. And if they still said, I'm not sure, I always used to have about five people that would just shout out card or direct debit. No, I didn't.

None of that happened. But it used to be as simple as here's my bank details. Okay, the information is going to be sent to you in a post.

You're insured from now or you'd be insured from Monday, the 14th of October, whatever. Thank you for calling. Now go away.

And that'd be it. We'd sort of go on to the next call. That'd be a sale.

Brilliant. And then about probably three, four, five months into me doing the job, someone came around with a piece of paper and they said, you have to read this every time you get a sale before you take the payment. And it was like two, nearly two pages of writing.

Then they came around again a little while later, maybe a week, two weeks with another piece of paper, not as much writing, probably half a page. You have to say this before you even start the quotation. Really? Yes, really.

And they just added on more stuff, reading the Data Protection Act, reading. Oh, now before you take this new thing you had to do before you put the money through, or after you put the money through. It's like all these different scripts that had to be read out at different times, which made the phone call a lot longer and made it much more tedious for the customer as well as for the person working in the call centre.

And it went from being an easy job for someone who was good at selling to something that made it harder to sell because there was no flow. It was a constant interruption It was like trying to do the 100 metres race but in six parts, you know, keep stopping and keep going. You know, there'd be a different winner because not everybody is able to keep taking off and getting this fast going, you know.

That made sense to me in my mind as I said it. I don't think it sounded very logical but I just started to get a bit silly but it was about protecting the customer, which I'm all for, you know. It's very good to customers should be protected and looked after.

But I made it so tedious. So I like talking at people, clearly. I do this.

This is what I do. I like that but it's not good for selling. It's really not.

It's a romance dampener, you could say, and a sales blocker. These sales blocked me, as they might say, and all these scripts. And then it got even worse.

They started saying, when I went to the next insurance job, they said, you need to start asking these questions in a specific way. So the question would be written on the screen. Have you got any motoring convictions? Or just any motoring convictions? Question mark.

Yes, no. And then they said, well, you have to ask it in a specific way. Do you or have you had any motoring convictions in the last five years with a fault or non-fault? And were you wearing flip-flops at the time? And it's like literally just they kept adding and adding and adding more questions that had to be asked specifically, which surprised me because I was really good at that.

Because I didn't realize how pedantic I am. And loads of people were failing the calls. So they'd get listened to.

And they got marked by whether or not they asked the questions correctly and collected the information correctly from the customer. And I suddenly was the top of that. There was one lady that was just behind me on that as well.

But I was the overall top. And I was making £150 a month extra just by doing that correctly. Because I was getting paid £25 for each 100% mark.

And very few people got 100%. And those that got less than, I'm not sure what the pass mark was. I think it was something like 65% would get in trouble.

They might lose money actually. Yeah, I think they did. They'd lose money.

They'd lose part of their bonus. So although they were paying people extra for getting a good mark, they were losing money if they got a really low mark. So I was getting £25 for each mark I got.

And I was pretty much every month I would do, how many did they do? I think they did six. So I think it was 25, 50, 25, 125. No, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25.

Two, four, six, eight, 10, 12. 25, 50, 25, 100, 25, 150. So it'd be six.

Oh, it's more than 150 then. So it's £60, six passes. I'd normally get six 100%.

Occasionally I'd only get five. So if I got five, I'd get £50, £125. But if whoever got six passes, 100% passes on their score would not only get the £150, but they'd get an extra, I think £50 on top of that as a reward for coming top.

It might've been £25, but I think it was £50. I didn't get it every month. It was between me and the other lady, but I got it probably three out of five months.

So I was ahead, but yeah, it was close. It was close, but I was just ahead of her. But I think she sold more than me as well.

So she was pretty much better at the job than I was in that sense. But it was quite weird because the bosses all went out to dinner from the head office. And my boss came back and he said, we were talking about you at lunch.

I said, really? I thought it was about the farting because I'd had a few warnings about it. And he said, no, it's not about the farting, although we do need to have another chat about that. We can't afford all the chairs that we keep replacing.

I said, okay, I'm sorry. He said, no, it's okay. It's a different subject.

I said, what do you mean you? There was a big pause after he said you. He said, didn't you see what just happened? I said, no. He said, look, all of the paperwork from my desk just got blue all over the floor.

I said, I don't know. I was busy looking at your face, waiting, looking at your lovely mouth, waiting for you to... Did you say lovely mouth? I said, no, I didn't say that. He said, I was waiting for you to finish your sentence because I respect you and you're the boss.

Anyway, why is all this stuff blown onto the floor? He said, why do you think? I said, I don't know. That's why I'm asking. He said, Jason, the reason all this stuff's blown onto the floor is because all of the windows in the office, every single window is open and it's a very windy day.

And hence, all of my paperwork that was sorted and organized is now on the floor in disarray. I said, okay, why is all the windows open? He looked at me. Do you really need me to answer that? I said, no, no, it's okay.

What were you saying? He said, yeah, the managers, the bosses said that you were the perfect employee. About me, they said that about me. I said, they said that about you? He said, no, that's what you're saying to the people you're listening to.

I said, okay. And I said, why is that? Why am I the perfect, the most wonderful, perfect specimen? He said, I didn't say perfect specimen or wonderful. I said, the best, perfect employee.

I said, okay. So how come I'm the sexiest? He said, I didn't say sexiest. I said, I know, but I'll read between the lines.

He said, trust me, there are no lines. I said, okay, a bit harsh. And he said, the reason being is because you do everything correctly.

You get 100% in practically every single mark. You don't make, hardly ever make a mistake. You do the job properly.

You talk to the customers. You've probably got the best phone voice. I'm adding this bit.

I'm not sure if he said that, but I probably did. And he said, and you sell well as well. He said, you're the perfect employee.

In fact, if we could get everybody in this office to be like you, then we'd be a lot more successful. I couldn't help but dance. You know, there's moments where you don't even realize you are dancing, but your feet, you suddenly realize your feet are just moving on their own.

That's what happened. I couldn't help it. It was lovely.

A lovely feeling, almost feeling like, I don't know, respected or wanted. It was nice, very nice. And he, yeah, that was it.

So what happened then is I applied for a job in the compliance department. And they were the people that were listening to my calls and basically marking them, you know. And I applied for that job.

And because I was, I knew it so well. And because I kept getting a hundred percent, I was the perfect person, really. And probably me and the other lady, but she, she wasn't willing to take a £20 a year pay cut.

So, but I just wanted to get out of sales. I don't know. I didn't, she was earning more than me in sales anyway, but I was, I think I was earning £25,000 a year there in the sales with all the extra bonuses and stuff.

And then I went down to, I think I was earning £13,000 a year, which is what £12,000 cut. Plus there was a bonus that took me up to about £17,000. There was like a yearly bonus.

So I dropped by £8,000 in order to do a job that was less problematic to me. And it's one of the best jobs I ever had as far as I was successful at it. And I think what's good though is I do the call, listen to them and I'd mark them.

And people would come and complain and say, I never said that. Team leader would say, no, you need to re-listen to it. And I'd re-listen to it.

Or someone else would re-listen to it. Cause there was a, there was a team of us, three of us, the boss and then me and the other, the lady and someone else had listened to it. It always came up correct.

I was always, I never once messed up with the calls and I was so pleased. Unfortunately, not everybody else was pleased with me because they were losing money off of their bonuses because they just weren't doing what they were supposed to do. Weren't asking the questions correctly, weren't giving the correct information to the customers.

And I didn't like that part of the job because I wouldn't want to affect anybody's wages or money. But, and I think that came back to sting me in the bum with the next insurance company I worked at because their compliance system, it was, so I left my one in 19, what, 2007, June, May, June time. And I went to university in September, 2007 to study counselling.

And then once I finished counselling, the course, graduated and I, I worked as a counsellor until 2013. But in December, I think 2012, I started working in insurance again because I'd lost a lot of work due to, you know, just cuts, government cuts and stuff. Because most of my counselling was with charities.

And I went back into insurance. So in 2000, it was basically 2013 because, but it was December 2012. So I don't know how many years that is, what, seven, eight, nine, ten, was it five years, six years, five, whatever, five and a half years.

It changed a lot. It become even stricter. And they got these, there's always questions.

All of them had to be asked in a certain way, every single one, not just like a few that were important, like every single question. And not only that, they started marking soft skills, which they called it, which would be, it was their way of stopping people from selling, basically. It was, and I tried to explain to them that I knew how to sell because I'd done it for years.

I knew how to do the job. It's not that, it wasn't that difficult. It's, you know, I found it fairly easy to do.

But they got a sales trainer in. And at this point, I was already in the top, the top percentage of sales people, fairly quickly when I first started. Took me a couple of months to get into it.

And then I was doing quite well. In fact, what happened is, when I was in training, my biggest issue was the computer system, because it was different from the one I'd used before. And other people working there had never worked in insurance before, so they were learning the system for the first time.

My brain was still a little bit stuck in the old system that I'd used for years and years previously. And I had, I think, I can't believe that the trainer actually said, I've got two days. She took me into personal one-on-one training for two days and said, if you don't, because I failed one of the tests, that would allow me to work on the floor and, you know, to go live or on my own rather.

And there was only about eight of us, I think, all together in the little training zone around the corner from the actual floor, the sales floor. And she said, well, if you don't pass this, then we'll have to let you go. You won't pass the training.

It was, I think, a two or three week training. I thought, okay. And it was just how to use the system.

That was it really. So I stayed with her and she wasn't with me the whole time. She just left me on my own to do stuff, but I was sitting separate to the others.

And what was really weird is I did that. And then I was allowed to go live on the phones because I passed the test and, you know, and everyone else was live on the phones, but we're still separate from everyone else, but we were just, but they were already live because they'd already passed the test. So I passed the test.

And as soon as I got on the phones, after about three days, two, three days, they said, yeah, you're ready. We're going to put you into your team now. So I was the first to go onto the live floor with all the, like into an actual team and the trainees that I was with, they still stayed there for a little bit.

So after going from being behind, I ended up being the first one to join the team. And yeah, I was kind of one of the top sellers. I wasn't the top, but I was doing all right.

But then they had this sales training and we were just mucking around in it really, just thinking it was funny because especially as I was doing the sales training with people that like myself had been doing it for years. What I didn't know is they were going to be marking people by how they sold, by the words they used and by the phrases they used. They actually wanted us to be like little robots regurgitating these specific sentences.

And it was a micromanagement at a level that I've never experienced in my life. And I said to the management, I said, I know how to sell car insurance. I don't need training.

I don't need, it's always good to have extra training. I was up for that. Any new information is great.

But then to be told you're using the wrong sentences, I was like, what? You're using the wrong intonation. Huh? Very strange. I lost half of my bonus on a month because I'd said it in a wrong way.

I think it was like 500 pounds or something I lost. And I didn't make any new friends that week. That's all I'm saying.

I just said, yes. And I kind of thought it was it. It got me back for all the bonuses that people lost when I was doing the compliance in the other place.

So that was my job though. So I suppose whoever was listening to these calls, it was their job. But the person listening to it was my boss.

So he'd come in and say, why everyone's, everyone's smile. Everyone's smile. And they'd like 10 minutes earlier, just told me that I'd lost 500 pounds off my bonus for the month.

Why aren't you smiling? Oh dear. My answer was basically keep doing that, but you're going to have to wait until you need to open the windows. You're going to have to open the window in a minute, mate, because I'm going to let off the biggest fart in history.

The thing is, it was really, I had a really nice boss. It's just, yeah, he was a really nice bloke. It's strange how people can be on some level difficult, but also on another level, like absolutely really nice.

I think it was just the culture of the place really. It was, they were trying to do something. I don't know what it was they were trying to do.

It didn't work anyway because they're closed, but there's, what's that? There's someone outside. Who's that outside? I didn't get very far into the big issue, did I? Now this was a boring recording, but it's supposed to be, isn't it? So I'm going to go. I'm going to go.

Thank you for listening. Remember to be kind to yourself because you deserve to be happy. Lots of love.

Bye. See you.