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I have been working as a part-time telephone market research interviewer for the last 3 1/2 years, but I also collect Social Security Disability payments due to physical and emotional problems. To me, both of them are incomes, and I need them both to survive. Just like everybody else, I have to pay my rent, phone bill, electric bill, cellphone bill, insurance, buy food, get my medicines, have to have busfare in order to get to work as well as get me around, and so forth.

I have worked in market research before, and it's a "feast or famine" business. You only work when the work is there. At my present job, if there's no work, or if there's a study pending, they will tell us to call in because the owner simply doesn't have the time to call everybody in. I work for a small family-owned outfit, and he's either busy with clients or programming new studies. We can't start calling on these jobs until he gets an OK from the client.

Since I've been working there, on average, the longest that they have gone without work is at least a week to ten days. However, at a few of the other market research firms that I worked at, they have gone without work for at least several weeks to a month. At this one place, the work there was so sporadic that it wasn't even funny. At another place, I remember there wasn't any work for a month and a half, and I had to go on unemployment in order to survive. There were times that I have told them that I'm a single woman who has to have a steady income in order to make a living, but all they could tell me that this is simply the nature of the business. In fact, one of them told me that I should make a career move.

Just like before, some of the people that I work with do have other jobs. Market research interviewing is an income-supplementing job, and if you have to pay your bills, it's still a job. But there were times that it was my only source of income, and I had to do everything within my power to hold on to that job. I have tried applying for other jobs that are steadier, but they turn me down because the company chose to hire someone who was more suited to their needs.

Whether or not you do surveys online or from an office, it is still a job, and if you have to pay your bills, you've got to do what you've got to do in order to survive; and that's the bottom line.

Learn more about this author, Lisa Fagan.
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