My latest news...and my last-ditch-effort online personal ad

[DiscoPro_Joe]

Hello everyone...long time no see. I was actually planning on posting a new topic message this week, even before reading about Winston's dilemma with Dianne.

My insurance call-center job turned out to be too much for me...as I burned out completely in late May after 9 months of being on the telephone with customers for 40 hours per week. The earliest stages of the burnout began in mid-February: slowly at first and barely noticeable, but with an accelerating deterioration. I'd like to return to repairing devices (such as computers, copiers, etc.) around my city if possible, or at least before I expatriate in the coming two years, probably to China. And luckily, I currently reside in my own apartment and have ample savings in the form of gold bullion (been investing in it since 2003, and it's not kept at my apartment, mind you), so life is still good.

At the beginning of this week, I decided to beef up my online personal ads (I have one on Yahoo, and another on Match.com). I'm actually doing this "improvement" of my ad as a last-ditch effort to find a girlfriend here.

I dramatically lengthened the narrative (to the maximum length allowed), and added a new 5th photo. Basically, I wanted to highlight the details about how I'm very different from most men, in the long-shot hope that this profile might spark the interest of a tiny minority of local women who encounter it. I've also sent a "wink" to 14 different women on those websites who seem to be somewhat compatible. As of the moment of this post, the update has only been running for two days, with less than one day since browsing and sending out all those "winks." I haven't had any luck yet, but am not optimistic, either.

You can view my Yahoo ad by clicking here. Many of you men will probably scoff at it, since I'm very, very different from most of you, but that won't bother me.

For those of you who joined this forum in the last 2 1/2 months and don't know me, here's a few previous posts of mine (click to view)...

My "Member Introduction" Post

"In Defense of Individualism and Feminism"

"Why a Male Feminist Like Me Can't Find an American Girlfriend"

I look forward to frequenting this board quite often during these coming weeks, and then off & on throughout the future!

[jamesbond]

Welcome back! Did you quit your call center job? I have worked at call centers in the past and they SUCK! Your on the phone all day long taking one call after another and you do get burned out! I especially hate those call center jobs where they monitor your phone calls! It's like big brother is watching you! You really have to watch what you say to the customers and stick to the script they give to you. I also worked at telemarking jobs after college and it was horrible as well! I was selling things from life insurance to magazines over the phone and the companies put a lot of pressure on you to make sales! The turn over rate was about 90% because the job was so horrible! Trying to sell something to somebody over the phone is difficult to say the least.

Good luck with the personal ads. I read a stat that 80% of online dating users are men and only 20% are women! Of course most of the women are either overwieght or unattractive so that really narrows the field. I myself tried it for a couple of months years ago and got nowhere. As much as I hate the bar scene, I may be headed in that direction again.

[DiscoPro_Joe]

Yes, call-center work sucks big time, and I'd never do it again. Of course, as a car-insurance customer service rep (taking inbound calls), all of my calls were monitored for legal purposes, but I actually was treated quite well as an employee.

What's funny is that call centers are being constructed and opened like crazy everywhere in Oklahoma City, but yet, I haven't talked to a single person who even knows someone who's worked at a call center, so nobody can really relate to my burnout. A month ago, I caught a glimpse of the front page of the local newspaper with an article that said something like, "Another call center is opening....The local economy is doing great!"

With regard to the online personal ad ratio, I've noticed for a long time that the website advertisements across the Internet for those dating sites always feature gorgeous women in them, but never decent-looking men.

I read somewhere here on Happier Abroad that in China, there are more women with online ads than men. Hope that's true!

[Winston]

I feel for you DiscoProJoe. I had an experience like that once when I worked as a temp doing data entry and filing all day. At first it was ok. But eventually I felt the burn. After several months, I was burned out and couldn't tolerate it anymore. It was like frying my brain. When I finally quit and asked to get taken off the assignment, I felt like I had gotten out of jail. I had never felt so relieved and so free since I graduated from high school.

Why do you have to wait two years to go abroad though? You have the money saved up right?