My job was to
call or e-mail current clients and sell them wine. The bigger the purchase the better. Essentially, the job can best be described as
telemarketing for wine, but there were no cold calls. Current customers were divvied up among the
sales team and our job was to tailor offers to them via phone or e-mail, but
the old school staff preferred to have everyone call people. This was my worst nightmare. I hate calling people on the phone. Why would I want to call and bother them when
they are sure to be busy and most of them don’t want to buy wine over the
phone.
In addition,
I culminated new clients from web sales.
Eventually, I ran the wine clubs and wedding registry which helped my
numbers out. In the beginning, half of
my day was spent in the office and the other half in the store. In the store, I could pick up new customers
as sometimes some guys would come in off the street and plunk down a few grand
like it was nothing. In the evenings, we
had customers who rented out the cold room where I interviewed for sit-down
dinners and the kitchen room for larger sit downs and walk arounds. Everything had lots of food and always lots of
wine. Then the Portfolio Managers became
the Sommeliers for these events.
The best part
of the job was tasting. Our owner only
brought in the best bottles. I tasted
everything from 1971 Giacosa Red Label Barolo to Gaja, Quintarelli, Scavino and
tons of other producers from main stream to rare bottlings. If I wanted to
entertain a client, I could. I could
have Chef make us a 4 course meal and open anything I wanted as long as I
procured a sale. Wedding Consultations
always had a minimum of cheeses and meats and a few wines to taste.
I started out
on salary. A miserable salary. After 3 months, they bumped the salary a
little. My first Christmas there I
actually received a year end bonus. It
wasn’t much, but it was something.
But, there
were all the things they didn’t tell me.
My boss told me there were Saturday hours. I didn’t mind that at all. I looked forward to having another day off
during the week to get errands done.
Except, Saturday hours meant you had to work a mandatory 6-day work week
once a month for no extra money and no additional day off. That, they didn’t tell me.
They also
told me that I get paid for events.
Except when an event coincides with my regular work day. If I work from 10am-7pm and an event starts
at 6pm, I don’t get event pay until 7pm.
Wait a minute… These people paid
for the event, but I don’t get paid for the first hour? Didn’t tell me this either. And, if you work a Saturday and you work the
public tasting at 1pm for 2 hours and then an evening event starts at 5:30pm,
you get nothing extra. And remember, no
Saturday pay on my 6th work day of the week.
The biggest
lie the store tells people happens when they rent the small, cold room. They charge people $300 and tell them that’s
for the Sommelier. Um, I get 17 bucks an
hour and that’s after the store closes. What
a bunch of bullshit. That really hurts
my tip especially if they already think I’m getting $300. If I schlep across town for an off-site event
that starts at 2pm, I don’t get paid extra.
These people pay us. I felt like
I was being robbed every day, but I always knew who my assailant was.
When my first
checked arrived, I cried for a good 20 minutes.
Was that little figure really my check?
No comments:
Post a Comment