Gail Vaz-Oxlade on how her first job taught her tenacity: ‘Once I passed that spot, I could smell the money’

Finance guru and Til Debt Do Us Part host Gail Vaz-Oxlade didn’t always know about money … because she didn’t have any. In 1977, the new immigrant faced big changes and challenges. In Canada, if she wanted spending money, she’d have to work for it.

I was 18 and a fresh immigrant to Toronto from Jamaica. I’d never worked before, never even had a sense of what kind of job I might do if I had to work. My family’s financial circumstances were markedly different here. If I wanted money, I’d have to find a way to earn it myself.

I had an uncle here, a real hustler who’d spent his early life piecing together an income for his family while he completed university. He had a job as a telephone surveyor and said, “You can come work here.” I didn’t think at all about whether it was a good job – just that it was a job – and I wanted it because I wanted money.

I’d show up every day and be handed the political survey questionnaire of the day with a long, long list of telephone numbers to call. I had that, a very small space and a phone. It was a pay-by-piece job: There were two marked parts of every survey, and if you got to the first mark, you got a certain amount, and if you got to the end, you got paid in full. If you didn’t get to the first mark, you got nothing.

Sometimes, I’d be calling people up at 9 a.m. on a Sunday morning to ask them what political party they were going to vote for, so you can just imagine how well received I was. Still, my goal was to at least get to the first cut-off point so the call wasn’t a complete waste of my time. Once I passed that spot, I could smell the money I’d make by getting to the end. I’d cajole and coax my quarry until I flipped to the very last question.

I’d ask about the issues – schooling, housing, health care – but also very pointed questions about voting: “How have you voted in the past?” “How do you plan to vote in the future?” Lots of people hung up on me. Some people were rude, some were offended. There were a lot of people who didn’t want to talk about politics, but there were a fair amount of people who did want to talk about politics. This was a problem because I actually knew nothing about politics; Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats were all the same to me.

Keep in mind that I’m a Jamaican, with a thick accent, but I spoke the Queen’s English. At first, I dropped my voice and tried to hide it, but I soon learned that my accent offered a kind of intrigue that kept people listening. My whole life, people have said, “You have such an interesting accent, where are you from?” They usually guess South African or Irish. There are actually a lot of Irish people in Jamaica, so the way we run our words together are similar.

I decided I didn’t want to work to change my accent, though it’s hard to be true to yourself, too. I am who I am. I learned to smile on the phone, because it shows, and that, plus the accent, actually made me really good at the job. It took about a week to get the hang of it, but soon, I had a wickedly good record for survey completions. About four weeks into the job, my manager moved me from a by-the-piece system to a straight-up $10 an hour. In 1978, that was a lot of money – about $47/hour today. Pretty good if you can take the beating!

You couldn’t go off script for the questions, but you definitely could during the in-betweens. They’d ask, “Where are you from?” and I’d say, “I’ll tell you at the end of the survey.” I learned to be playful and that a positive attitude meant a greater likelihood of a positive outcome. But negative outcomes happen, too. Maybe this summer was the genesis of my thick skin. If you wanted to get what you wanted, you had to keep going. This tenacious streak would stand me in good stead throughout my whole life.

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