P*ss & Moan Hotline Operator at WI Dept. of Revenue

http://wisc.jobs/public/job_view.asp?annoid=57473&jobid=56988

"Job Title: Lottery Customer Service Specialist (Telemarketer)

Job Announcement Code(s): 12-00492

Agency: Wisconsin Department of Revenue

County(ies): Dane

Classification Title: / JAC:

Job Working Title: LOTTERY CUSTOMER SERVICE SPECIALIST 12-00492

Lottery Customer Service Specialist - Telemarketer

Type of Employment: Full Time (40 hrs/week)

Salary: Pay will not be less than the minimum of the pay schedule/pay range 07-04, $16.902 per hour. A six month probationary period will be required.

Bargaining Unit: Non-Represented

Area of Competition: Open

Deadline to Apply: 2/29/2012 by 4:30 p.m.

Exam Information: 07001 - 001 LOTTERY CUSTOMER SERVICE SPECIALIST

This position is located in Madison, at the Department of Revenue, in the Division of Lottery.

Job Duties:

Under the general supervision of the Telemarketing Supervisor within the Retailer Management Section this position is responsible for providing services to assist over 3700 retailers and non-profit organizations throughout the state in the sale of instant, pull-tab and on-line tickets. Responsibilities include: providing personalized retailer information regarding individual retailer and area game sales, winning tickets sold by the retailer, new games, products and lottery services available, and the types of games that individual and area retailers have had success. Work is performed under general supervision and requires emphasis on increasing ticket sales, providing customer service and problem resolution.

Special Notes: A comprehensive background check and a tax non-filer check will be conducted on the most qualified candidates.

Job Knowledge, Skills and Abilities: Knowledge of business practices and customer service principles and techniques. Ability to: develop and maintain effective working relationships with staff with in the division, in other divisions, departments and the public, to communicate effectively both in person and over the phone with customers. Skills in: Microsoft Office products (excel, word-processing, e-mail), effective written and oral communication skills with both internal and external customers the use of Contact management Software (Goldmine, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Salesforce.com)."

Policy analysts are in for a treat, as in this post I perform some policy analysis of my own while incorporating citations from extant program evaluations. One of the things I learned in college is that a university is one of the least effective ways to learn policy analysis. Rather, one should scour the public records to find data to crunch and then see what patterns you can find. Doing this on your own time is preferable because you not only save tuition and the opportunity cost of lost employment hours spent in class, but you also are free of research deadlines and hence can be as thorough as you have the patience to be. I enjoy true academic freedom to write original, practical research when I want on whatever subjects I want without some professor imposing deadlines or scope constraints.

The above job vacancy might not seem absurd until you see that the State of Wisconsin pays people almost $17 an hour as the starting wage to shill the lottery to retailers! The preview for the civil service exam reveals the applicant must describe his/her experience in sales, customer relations databases, and automatic dialers. While there are relatively few people who have experience in all three areas, the same may be said of applicants for similarly specialized positions in the private sector paying $8 to $10 per hour. The state is just encouraging a deluge of unqualified applicants to waste HR’s time sifting through by setting the starting wage that high.

The full-time schedule mandates benefits which are typically avoided by private-sector employers by capping weekly work hours below 35 to minimize the likelihood that weekly hours will total 40 or greater, in which overtime pay would be mandated by statute. Although neither statutes nor agency rules mandate the payment of time off or vacations, it is customary in Wisconsin to offer those benefits to employees who average over 35 hours of work weekly. State benefits alone, including unemployment insurance tax paid by the employer, are about a third of the wage, and so the minimum hourly cost for the position is around $22.50. To truly grasp the magnitude of the compensation for a single Department of Revenue telemarketer, we need to multiply the compensation by the number of hours worked annually:

40 hours/week X 52 weeks = 2,080 hours

2080 hours – (10 furloughs and state holidays occurring on weekdays X 8 hours/day) = 2,000 hours

2,000 hours X $22.50 = $45,000 paid to Department of Revenue telemarketer (w/out commission)

Let us compare this to the typical private-sector telemarketer compensation:

34.49 hours/week X 52 weeks = 1,793.48 hours, rounded down to 1,793 hours

Because time off is unpaid for part-time employees, let us presume the employee does not request vacation but may have to use several sick days (while being certain to get someone to cover the shift). Let us presume a base wage of $8 but with the employer paying an additional $2 per hour to the state for unemployment insurance tax:

1,793 hours – 3 unpaid sick days = 1,790 hours

1,790 hours X $10 = $17,900 paid to private-sector telemarketer (w/out commission)

It is thus clear that the Department of Revenue pays over 2.5 times as much for a telemarketer as the private sector does. Wisconsin could reduce compensation expenses by paying some of that wage in commission and by capping weekly hours to 34.49 weekly. I know the University of Wisconsin System does the latter to prevent student workers from being scheduled full-time for the very same reason of cost control, so it’s not like the state can claim some moral high ground as the reason for overpaying its non-student workers, at least not without coming across as very hypocritical.

A worker who has been doing that job for a decade will garner $27.50 or so in hourly compensation when calculated at an annual average raise of 50 cents with benefits remaining a third of total compensation. This would earn the state telemarketer $55,000 annually in total compensation, or more than three times the base pay of the typical private-sector telemarketer. This is in addition to the multimillion-dollar contracts which Wisconsin has with advertising agencies to promote the lottery, with the most recent being an unevaluated five-year contract with the Milwaukee firm “York Hoffman,” which in turn faced no penalties or other consequences for the lack of oversight:

http://legis.wisconsin.gov/lab/reports/08-13highlights.htm

If the high pay given to such a clerical worker (paid by the hour, not by sales volume) isn’t outrageous enough, then one need only consider that Wisconsin is paying someone to promote gambling. “But problem gamblers have themselves to blame.” So do problem drinkers, but Wisconsin does not sell alcohol. Whether this is due to stiff competition from private alcohol retailers rather than due to some moral objection, the fact is that Wisconsin and other states promote gambling despite it traditionally being considered a vice and even outlawed in some cities.

Besides exacerbating gambling problems, the telemarketer is paid to ultimately gather tax credits for homeowners but not for any renters, although both purchase tickets. The net proceeds after administrative costs go towards property tax relief. This means that gambling addicts may rationalize their destructive behavior if at least some of their purchases are from the Wisconsin lottery. Many of these gamblers are renters who never benefit from that property tax subsidy because they do not own real estate. While I’m certain that gamblers will purchase lottery tickets no matter whether the proceeds are used to support causes dear to them (such as paying a few hundred dollars less on their next property tax bill), Wisconsin’s active marketing of a program which panders to people’s weaknesses seems incongruous with the otherwise moralist, patronizing stance of Wisconsin (which has banned public smoking and attempted to ban the sale of unpasteurized goat milk, among other things).

Custodian at "Palooka University" UW-Milwaukee; To Be Hired via Random Number Generator

http://wisc.jobs/public/job_view.asp?annoid=23049&jobid=22564

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Job Title: UW-Milwaukee Custodian

Job Announcement Code(s): 07-01844
County(ies): Milwaukee
Classification Title/JAC: Job
Working Title: CUSTODIAN 07-01844
Type of Employment: Full Time (40 hrs/week)
Part Time (less than 40 hrs/week)
Evening 2nd Shift (3pm to 11pm or similar hours)
Evening 3rd Shift (11pm to 7am or similar hours)
Seasonal (minimum of 600 hrs/year but less than 1828 hrs/year)
Salary: The starting pay rate is $11.284 per hour (schedule/range 03/08), including an excellent benefits package. A 6-month probationary period is required.

Special Qualifications:
Must be able to lift up to 60 pounds and push/pull up to 100 pounds; must be able to bend, twist, stoop, push, pull and climb ladders.

Contact the UWM Human Resources Department for further information and application procedures:
Phone: 414-229-4463 Fax: 414-229-4102

Bargaining Unit: Non-Represented
Area of Competition: Open
Deadline to Apply: Open
Exam Information: 89161-010 CUSTODIAN
Preview Exam: http://wisc.jobs/public/ExamApplicantPreview.asp?txtExamID=5732
WARNING: Question not assigned

The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee is currently accepting applications to fill custodian vacancies on campus. UWM, a doctoral/research intensive university, is Wisconsin's premier public urban university and offers a comprehensive liberal arts and professional education at the undergraduate and graduate level to its 30,500 students. UWM takes pride in being a student-centered institution that is deeply committed to diversity in its student body, faculty, staff, and programs. UWM's 103-acre campus is located on Milwaukee's upper east side, one of the city's most attractive residential areas and home to many faculty, staff, and students. For more information, please visit our Web site at http://www.uwm.edu/.

We interrupt this post for a word from our sponsor:

Thank you for visiting our sponsor!

Job Duties:

Provide general cleaning and maintenance in offices, classrooms, restrooms and all similar areas at the University. Sweep, vacuum, mop and wax floors, scrub walls and fixtures; dust, move furniture and equipment; replace light bulbs, empty waste receptacles, replenish supplies, shovel snow and perform miscellaneous related household duties. Working Conditions: Work inside State-owned/leased space in a variety of environments. Dust, chemical odors and noise commonly encountered on job. Occasional outside work, including extreme weather conditions during snow and ice control. Equipment used to perform essential functions: Brooms, mops, buffers, scrubbers, shampooers, vacuum cleaners, measuring tools, shovels, scrapers and snowblowers.

Special Notes:
This position will require a criminal records review. A pending charge or conviction will not necessarily disqualify an applicant. In compliance with the Wisconsin Fair Employment Act, the University does not discriminate on the basis of arrest or conviction record. For information relating to the campus security report for UWM, please visit the following: http://www.cleryact.uwm.edu/.

Job Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:
Qualified candidates will have the ability to move furniture, operate floor and carpet equipment, and work an 8 hour shift; the ability to use professional cleaning products; the ability to read and understand work instructions and schedules, warning signs and instruction manuals for equipment operation; and the ability to communicate effectively with supervisors, co-workers and building users. This position requires material handling up to 60 lbs. and pushing/pulling up to 100 lbs.

How To Apply:
Complete the Application for State Employment form, which is available online at http://oser.state.wi.us/application.asp or by calling the UW-Milwaukee Department of Human Resources at (414) 229-4463. List Job Announcement Code 0701844, check employment area (AREA 40) and send to UW-Milwaukee; Department of Human Resources; P.O. Box 413; Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413. There is no deadline as this is a continuous recruitment. A computer-generated, random numbering process will assign rankings. Applicants will remain eligible for three months. For additional information contact the UWM Human Resources Department at (414) 229-4463.

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The employment application asks for contact information, EEO characteristics, and availability of both time and geography. It does not ask for employment history or criminal records. Why? A random number generator determines applicant ranking! UW-Milwaukee uses the meritless, socialist method of selecting job applicants via raffle.

One cannot earn multiple drawings per period, either; it is purely luck of the draw and not influenced by any KSAs you may have developed. An institute of higher education, built upon the premise that education is necessary and good for advancement in life, posts a job vacancy which explicitly states that skills, experience, and education (such as vocational college) will not be considered towards the employability of an applicant!

Fortunately, a semblance of merit comes into play when the applicant needs to renew his/her application, which expires every three months. Those with the perseverance to re-submit an application up to four times annually will have better chances than those who let their application expire without resubmission.

Nonetheless, it is employment practices such as these random drawings for new hires which give Wisconsin government a bad reputation as a haven for those who are unemployable in any other organization. To be fair, the qualifications for high-level state positions such as budget analyst and program evaluator are pretty stringent in that you need at least five years of relevant experience. (I recently placed 4^th out of all applicants on the civil service exam for budget analyst, but the results did not show specific item scores or the total number of applicants.)

The lack of union representation keeps the starting wage of $11.28 per hour lower than what state employees are known for, but the lack of prior experience or even any requirement of “excellent interpersonal skills” or “friendly demeanor” justifies an even lower wage. This is without considering the benefits, which bring total hourly compensation to a minimum of $13.50. I witnessed many custodians at work while I toiled at my student jobs, and they were never in a hurry. They each had a half-hour lunch break during which they could watch television in the break room, as I would see this while busing tables to collect trays whenever I had cleaned all dish carts in UWM Restaurant Operations.

The custodial work at UWM is nothing compared to the frantic pace of Pizza Hut and its demanding customers. The floors don’t complain when they haven’t been adequately waxed. Custodians need not please members of the public but rather only need to tape off their work area and post “wet floor” placards to keep people from walking over wet surfaces. The custodians I saw at UWM never smiled unless to each other. In short, they would do horribly in customer service. I suppose misanthropes who need some legal income can always become a university custodian. Why enroll at UWM when you can win its employment lottery and be set for life working as a custodian?

Dec. 7, 2013 Update: As of this writing, no one has responded as to why anyone earning a decent wage and benefits as custodian would ever spend money on a university education. While for some it might be a "hey, I'm middle class now in THEORY" kind of deal when you enroll and eventually graduate, the economic motive is severely lacking.

I'll say that if you're that Hell-bent intent on getting some "higher education," then go to trade school, get some hands-on job placement through a formal apprentice program, and earn some money instead of competing in the surplus labor pool of fellow over-educated higher education rubes university graduates.

Patronize your library and reliable information sources on the Internet. THEN, if you STILL believe you somehow need a university degree to validate your own personal and professional competence, then by all means blow $30,000 or whatever for a chance to network with people who won't care.
"Here's your &!##@^%^&# education!"

"Off The Quad" Seeks Non-Autistic, Wanna-Be Hipster Writers

Found on 02-08-2012 at URL:
http://madison.craigslist.org/wri/2802874005.html

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"Job Title: Digital Media Internship (Madison)
Date: 2012-01-16, 1:39PM CST

What is Off The Quad? Off The Quad is an emerging digital lifestyle publication that delivers unique localized content to students specifically about their campus. Simply put, OTQ provides exclusive access to the gotta-know info and best-of happenings going down in college towns.

Off The Quad is providing an opportunity for University of Wisconsin students to write about the lifestyle and entertainment subjects that they know and enjoy the most, for one of the coolest (at least we think so) digital publications around. This is also a chance to write for a fun, fast-growing company with future opportunities to advance -- and to get academic credit and payment for doing it.

The ideal candidate will have knowledge of student life in Madison and a wit when describing it. The ideal candidate will be in the know about popular local trends and will have an eye for all things cool, a gift of language, and a keen knowledge of service journalism. He or she will also be positive, detail-oriented, enthusiastic, and organized.

Responsibilities:
· Represent the Off The Quad brand at the University of Wisconsin
· Assume responsibility for providing University of Wisconsin oriented content -- from finding great topics to determining how best to present them to executing that vision
· Manage a network of contacts, business owners, and tipsters to source and develop new topics regularly
· Work regularly with Managing Editor to refine and develop voice, style, and content
· Other duties as assigned

Qualifications:
· Firm understanding of the Off The Quad mindset and voice
· Witty sense of humor
· Excellent time-management and organizational skills, plus a high comfort level with deadlines
· Enthusiastic self-starter; impervious to writer's block
· Relentless eye for detail; perfectionist tendencies

Compensation: Academic credit + stipend

WHAT TO SUBMIT: A complete application for the position must include:
· An updated C.V.
· A cover letter
· Twitter name (if applicable)"

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Pardon me in advance for a longer-than-usual commentary. The amount of hyperbole in the vacancy created much skepticism in my mind about the company itself, so I did an Internet search to find enough information to put this ad into context. (I had to use “off;the;quad” as a Boolean phrase to find the firm’s website because it is neither listed in the vacancy description nor in the first SERP for a natural language search, even when its headquarters city of Madison is included in the query.) I recount not only my reservations about the nature of the position but also concerns about the company’s design and intent. Here we go:

This “digital media internship” seems to a very demanding position with peanuts for compensation. (Stipends for academically credited internships are typically $100-$120 per week.) Not only will the intern write an unspecified number of articles per day (as the official Off the Quad website describes itself as “delivered daily”), but he/she will also liaise with informants throughout the community to gather “exclusive…info” on “happenings going down in college towns.”

In order to be truly exclusive, the information would need to be outside the public domain, thereby excluding most entertainment establishments via the fact that reputable venues tend to post upcoming performances online or at least on a poster inside the building.

This leaves private drinking parties hosted at apartments and rental homes. The local police might get wise to this and begin posing as Off the Quad (herein abbreviated as OQ because proper English dictates that definite articles such as “the” are never abbreviated) reporters to get the latest inside scoop on these parties.

I was going to say that they could just pick up a copy to read the listings under “drinking parties,” but OQ is entirely online and requires registration via Facebook invitation from a currently registered OQ member. I suppose this is the primary means by which OQ assesses the likelihood of a registrant being an undercover agent or snitch. OQ then calculates an influence score based on social media connections, posts, and the like.

I believe this is a poor “measure of influence on your campus culture,” as the OQ website puts it, because anyone who spends enough time online to have a high social media activity rating is obviously doing less talking in person or on the phone (unless he/she is communicating online with total strangers who would never warrant actual face-to-face conversation). Likability is not synonymous with influence.

The use of celebrities to promote consumer goods such as deodorant, antacid, and soft drinks is more to placate the egos of the brand owners than to convince an undecided consumer. When was the last time you heard anyone over the age of 12 say, “I eat this brand of snack chips because my (non-parental) role model / hero(ine) does?” When was the last time a toothpaste commercial featured a celebrity endorsement?

On a more local level, think about the people in your social networks who have more than 500 online connections. Do they generally relate more credibly to you than the portion of your friends who have 100 or fewer online connections or don’t use social media at all?

Just as there are many well-respected people / college students who are conservative in who they add as an online connection to ensure quality and mutual respect, there are many social media users who have many online connections because they added connections without regard for whether mutual respect is present. A connection without respect lacks credibility, and you need to be credible to persuade someone.

It’s tragically common to see someone “tweet” or post to someone’s “Facebook wall” in front of 500+ connections / subscribers about taking some action, and perhaps one or two comply with the offer. A helpful qualifier would be quality of social media connections, e.g. how well do you know each connection?

The percentage of connections actually seen in person or spoken to on the phone at least monthly would be a much better metric than sheer “feed presence” volume alone. Some people have many “FB friends” from offline organizations -- not because they’re taken seriously, but because their acquaintances enjoy watching for the next faux pas to exploit later in the office, as well as encouraging the person to further caricaturize himself/herself via increasingly drastic / pathetic ways of getting and retaining more attention.

Whether OQ members or not, I imagine most of the contacts tapped to be event informants are cold calls or whatever friends one has when hired. They better be “hip,” or else Off the Quad will come across as “Old-Fashioned Square!” Can you imagine the flak that Off the Quad would receive for posting information about the upcoming Unix wireless networking party? Hipsters forbid!

I visited the OQ website at offthequad.com to develop a semblance of understanding about its revenue model and organizational culture. The first thing that jumps out if a sparse splash page with Lilliputian links at the bottom of the screen halfway covering the main body text such that I had to scroll to read the first and only real paragraph of welcome text.

This is poor design for a website which markets itself as an expert in digital publication. The links menu has goofy placement because it hovers over everything as the visitor tries to scroll content upward.

This obstruction is the main reason why link menus have traditionally been placed at the top or left side of the screen; placement of an n-pixel-wide hovering menu on the side where you would initially scroll to obscures the final n width of pixels in the direction you want to scroll to, e.g. the right-most or bottom-most margin. The larger the hovering menu is, the more of the web page which will remain obscured until the visitor clicks and drags over the underlying page elements and pastes into a text editor to read what the menu is blocking.

After digesting the horrid site design, the next thing I noticed was a phallic logo consisting of an obelisk with two blocky buildings at its base. This reminded me of the Masonic code word “tubalcain,” or two balls and a cane. This hints that a Freemason fraternity is heavily involved in operations, or at least the OQ marketing team wants to resonate with that crowd. (I will not comment on the extent to which Freemasons do or not have substantial local power in their communities, except that what I’ve seen is that personal success varies greatly from Mason to Mason and that membership is only a mark of peer-assessed character / likability and not so much of actual influence, unless you count a Freemason selling insurance to fellow Lodge members as influence.)

I finally inferred OQ’s revenue model via a synthesis of its advertising, editorial, and privacy policies. Although OQ staff “cannot be bribed” into writing articles about entertainment events or marketing promotions, OQ accepts “inquiries for advertising opportunities…across multiple digital platforms.” It becomes clear that these “platforms” are the social media accounts of those joined OQ.

Irrespective of what portion of OQ articles are actually about event promotions, OQ uses its circulation to solicit entries into various contests held by its advertising partners. It is elementary logic that the firms financing the contests give OQ a cut of the revenue, as frequently such contests allow one free drawing entry per day but announce “more chances to win when you buy…” notwithstanding the fact that almost all contests contain fine print explaining that quantity of purchases has no bearing on chances of winning.

This makes the job vacancy for OQ “digital media intern” (really a content destination marketer) even more absurd because it entails writing articles for a bunch of glorified social media-fueled lotteries and convincing more businesses to contract OQ as a recruitment agent for their contests. That doesn’t sound too “cool” or “hip” to me, but that’s because I read the fine print.

I’ve seen plenty of college students give away their personal information to credit card companies in exchange for a free ice cream cone, so OQ will do fine until it loses its novelty. For the record, Off the Quad has no relationship with the Quad Group, which owns the Graphics, Medical, and Technical sub-brands of Quad.

Bonus: Here is a parody about Off the Quad that I call "Off the Quaid":