The jobs we love to hate

Parking wardens, telemarketers and used car salesmen, we avoid them at all costs. They're unpopular, not trusted. But perhaps they're just misunderstood. Jehan Casinader meets the hardy souls who do the jobs we love to loathe.

El Cheapo is an awful name for a car yard. It conjures up images of rust-bucket cars in a barely roadworthy state, being sold for next-to-nothing to cash-strapped drivers. In 1987, Pat Baker took a punt when he picked "El Cheapo" as the name of his used car yard. He knew he would cop some flak, especially when Fair Go started sniffing around, though in the 23 years he has been in business, he has never ended up on that show. But Baker accepts that used car salesmen are universally distrusted by the public.

"Some people think used car salesmen are crooks," he says. "That's crap. It's just one of those things that has been passed down from generation to generation. If we tried to rip people off, we wouldn't be in business. Many of my old competitors are no longer in business. Have I sold a few lemons in my time? No doubt. But if there's a problem and if it's my fault, I will fix it. I'm human. It's the putting right that counts."

Many websites portray used car salesmen as swindlers and rip-off merchants. Some sites promise to expose "all the secrets and all the tricks", to allow shoppers to "beat the dealer and the salesman at their own game". But after all these years, Baker is still perplexed by the stereotypes associated with his job. Some people walk into his car yard but refuse to talk to him. He can't understand why. The cars are AA-checked and he offers a personal guarantee. He reckons most Kiwi dealers play by the rules.

Yet a recent Reader's Digest survey named used car sales as one of New Zealand's least trusted professions. Baker has been in the industry for almost 30 years. He set up shop in Lower Hutt in the 1980s, wanting to sell the cheapest cars on the market. He wasn't fussed about what the public thought of the industry. He gave up a good job as a butcher to become a car salesman. Selling meat, he says, is much like selling cars.

"When someone came into the butcher's shop, I'd say, 'how can I help you?' If they wanted a pound of sausages, we gave them a pound of sausages. If they wanted a kilo of mince, we gave them a kilo of mince. As a car dealer, if someone comes and asks for a blue car, I don't sell them a white car. If they want a five-door hatch, I don't sell them a four-door saloon. I never try to sell them something they don't really want."

As Baker strides across his yard, a customer asks why a van is so cheap. That price is a mistake, says Baker. The figure "should have been higher", but he agrees to sell it at the original price. He likes to sell cars cheaply, he says, "but not that cheap". What if someone makes a low offer? He tells them to get lost. He doesn't want to sell cars that aren't worth selling, and he's not trying to pull the wool over his customers' eyes.

Baker goes to Japan to hand-pick the used cars he wants to import. In the heyday of his business, in the late 1990s, he travelled to Japan every six weeks, hopping between Tokyo, Yokohama and Osaka. These days, he travels less often, but the trips are just as exhausting. He looks at 8000 cars in a single day, and often travels by night to the next location, to prepare for an early auction the next morning. For the 53-year-old it's a bit of a chore but he sticks to his "El Cheapo" brand and flies in cattle class.

Used car salesmen aren't the only ones with an unenviable rap.

Telemarketers fared worst of all professions in the Reader's Digest survey. Unlike used car salesmen, telemarketers are nameless and faceless. They invite themselves into our lives and ask us to spend money. Sophie Stewart is one of those people. She started making "cold calls" during her university days, when she ran a corporate gifts business. She has been a telemarketer in Melbourne and London and now runs her own firm, The 99 Corporation, in Hastings.

The 29-year-old has heard the word "no" more times than she cares to remember. Every day, telemarketers like Stewart do battle with householders around the country. It sounds like a sport. Telemarketers often face "call reluctance" and "confrontational adversity", she says. Translation: some people tell them to get lost. If we're honest, most of us have been rude to telemarketers, especially those who call during dinner.

"You never know what situation you've caught someone in," says Stewart. "They could have just walked into their house and found some terrible news. Or they could have just watched someone get kicked off MasterChef. We don't know what is going on in their lives. It's never personal. We aren't trying to sell you something you're not interested in, so you don't need to be rude. We know when someone's had enough."

Stewart leads an all-women team of 15. Many are mothers who have returned to work to earn some extra cash while looking after their kids. Others have made a living out of telemarketing. All of them are educated, and all of them are Kiwis. Stewart is proud of them. None of her staff fit the stereotype of the twisted telemarketer. They are "decent and hardworking" employees and they deserve to be treated with respect.

But why should we welcome telemarketers? They make a living by contacting us without solicitation, to convince us to buy products which we may not have needed or wanted until hearing their slick sales pitch.

Stewart objects, and says it's "not about 'sell, sell, sell"'. She refuses to work for clients who expect her operators to be pushy and pedantic. In fact, some of her clients have walked away because the callers didn't make enough sales on the phone. But Stewart wants to run a fair and ethical business.

"We check out the products we're promoting. When we did some work for a beauty therapy company, I used their services. I can honestly tell people, 'this is amazing'. If we sell food products, we get them in and taste them. If we market accommodation, we check it out. People don't want to turn up there and find it differs from what they were sold. And if we don't like the product or service, it's very difficult to sell it."

How do they get our phone numbers? Stewart says data companies collate directory listings into spreadsheets, and sell them to telemarketing firms. Our contact details can also be stored when we fill out surveys or subscribe to magazines. The Marketing Association has a "Do Not Call" register for those who want to be invisible. Stewart's firm can't afford to access the register, but she says her calls are well-intentioned.

Most of us will do anything to avoid awkward chats with strangers, especially chats involving money. For Stewart, it came naturally. But for 25-year-old Rowena Bray, it took a few months to get used to. Bray is a business owner with Amway, one of the world's largest direct sales companies. Her job is to sell jewellery products by directly approaching members of the public. Not all of us are comfortable with receiving an unsolicited sales pitch, but Bray is part of a growing community of direct sales reps.

We meet in the lobby of a Christchurch hotel, where Bray is making her first sale of the day. She's meeting a client to talk about a jewellery range. Bray herself is decked out in a number of eye-catching items: a chunky necklace, earrings, a few bracelets and a couple of rings. She isn't just trying to make a good impression. She's trying to attract attention to her products. In public, it's not difficult to find new, eager clients.

"Females always comment on each other's clothes and jewellery," she says. "It's just something we do. I might be at a cafe and a girl next to me might say, 'I love that necklace, it looks great on you. Where did you get it?' I tell her that it's part of my business. I usually have a couple of catalogues in my handbag, so I give her one of those and ask whether it's okay for me to give her a call the following evening."

And so begins the sales process. Bray offers to run a jewellery party at the client's house, where she aims to sell Amway's products. She sets up a sales table, presents combinations of jewellery and allows the guests to try them on, before giving them a chance to buy. If a certain number of sales are made, the host gets to keep an item for free. Some people are keen, some people need convincing, and some flatly refuse.

Some direct selling firms have been criticised for charming consumers into buying overpriced and unnecessary items. But Amway doesn't do door-to-door sales. Most of Bray's clients have been referred to her by her friends and family. She says the items she sells are well-priced and provide good value for money, under a 90-day guarantee. Like Stewart, she doesn't want to flog off products which people don't really want.

"The choice is yours. I don't take offence if someone doesn't want to buy from me. Look at all the shops in this city. People have many options about how to spend their money. All I'm doing is offering them another choice. We do it in a personal setting, and I've got the customer's full attention. They can ask me as many questions as they like. How can that be a bad thing? It's a great opportunity to get some great value."

Some direct sales reps for companies like Amway and Avon want to earn a bit of pocket money. But Bray is an aspiring businesswoman, and she wants to make a fair income. Her business is low-risk, and has the potential for growth. She feels like she's part of the community, and she has been rewarded by Amway, including a trip to Melbourne for a weekend at the races. Bray baulks at the idea that the direct sales industry is held in low regard, and says her job has hugely boosted her confidence.

Having confidence when dealing with the public is not easy, especially when your job requires you to hit people's wallets. Auva'a Malaki knows what that's like. He's been a parking warden for seven years.

Samoan-born Malaki migrated to New Zealand for a better life. Like Pat Baker, he was a butcher for many years before seeking a career change. With a laugh, Malaki admits he has copped three parking tickets during his seven years as a warden. And he knows exactly how the public feels about his job.

On the streets of Lower Hutt, Malaki strikes an imposing figure. What's immediately noticeable are his tattoos, but upon closer inspection, they aren't as menacing as they seem. On his forearm, a tattoo of Superman. King Kong sits on one of his shoulders, and there's a snake on the other. The 46-year-old giggles as he explains how he and his mates got the tattoos done, back in Samoa, to make them look tough. He does have a hard image, but his first few weeks as a parking warden made him crumble.

"With the amount of abuse I got, I didn't think I'd last a month in this job. People call you names. All the names under the sun. And with me being an Islander, they don't really hold back. They treat all the parking wardens badly, including the Pakeha ones. But I get really bad abuse from people of my own colour, too. A few times I've been called a 'black piece of shit'. I was told to jump on the boat I came in and go back to my home country. When I applied for this job, I didn't know that it was this bad."
A woman comes ambling towards her car as Malaki prepares to give her a ticket for having a parking slip that had expired by 20 minutes. The woman doesn't apologise, but he lets her off. Parking wardens are often described as "revenue collectors" but Malaki says he doesn't try to make life difficult for people. He has heard all kinds of excuses from drivers trying to talk their way out of a ticket. Now, if he cops a spray, he just walks away.

Have seven years on the streets weakened his faith in society?

"I have never thought about that. Maybe the time will come when I will. But I just get on with my job. Sometimes I sit down with my colleagues, we have a smoke and we talk about the funny side of our jobs. We laugh. Ever since I started doing this job, I never took any of it home with me. If I get abused on the street, I leave it on the street. If I took all that stuff home, it would probably prevent me from being a good father."

Malaki faces the same challenges as other parking wardens across the country.

"I'm only doing my job" is a line often used by used car salesmen, telemarketers and direct salespeople too. It doesn't always have resonance with difficult people. But Malaki says many people in his community have respect for him. His job allows him to look after his wife and three children. He wants us to give a second thought to people like him, people who do the jobs we love to loathe.

"I was interviewed in the local paper recently. There was a letter from someone who said it's all right to hate parking wardens. My daughter took that really hard. She said, 'when I finish university, I'll get a good job that pays well, and you won't have to do this anymore'. My family wouldn't complain if I had a different job. But I do enjoy my work and I'm grateful to be here. Plus, it's hard to find jobs these days, mate."