I worked as a phone psychic. When most people think of phone psychics, they usually have mental images of Ms. Cleo or Dionne Warwick and her psychic friends. I had the same ideas that most people have about phone psychics; that people who work for these lines have no psychic ability, that their main objective is to keep you on the phone for as long as possible to get as much money as they can from you, that they collect personal information so that they can spam you or sell your information to telemarketers and pretty much anything else horrible you can relate to the phone psychic industry.
I was wrong though, it’s much worse than the average person could ever imagine. I should say that I do have empathic and intuitive abilities, but many who work as phone psychics have no psychic ability. The only thing that is really required of you is that you can be chatty enough to keep clients on the phone for at least fifteen to twenty minutes. If you cannot meet minimum talk time requirements then you will be “let go”. I have worked for a few psychic lines and have never found one that I feel has any ethical practices that mirror what I feel a good reader or company should have.
As bad as the customers are treated, the readers are treated just as bad or worse. The companies I have worked for provide no professional support; any questions or concerns you have are usually brushed aside with annoyance and scorn if they are answered at all. You can also look forward to being called at all hours of the night and told, not asked, to log in because they have more callers than they have readers.
And if you think that working as a phone psychic will make you rich, think again. You will make around fifteen to thirty cents a minute for the time that you are on a call. Most companies have hoops that you have to jump through to even get paid like a minimum call time or a minimum log in time. One company that I know of will not pay unless you have been logged in for at least thirty five hours in a week period.
If you have a conscience then you will probably get tired of taking calls from the most financially desperate people and trying to keep them on the phone for as long as possible. You will take calls from people who are suicidal and most of the time it’s unwritten company policy that you hold them on the phone for as long as you can before giving them a number for a suicide hotline. You will also receive a number of obscene phone calls that you have to suffer through. You’re personal comfort level does not matter; it’s all about talk time and talking to a pervert is better than not talking to anyone. You can expect to speak with the drunk, the stoned, the morally corrupt and the crazy.
There was not one shift that I worked as a phone psychic that I did not feel “dirty” or depressed after I logged out. I did not continue working as a phone psychic. I finally have gotten out of the phone psychic business; I’ve found other ways to give readings on my own terms. The only thing I have to worry about is how I am treating my customers. I feel good about what I’m doing now. I am ashamed to admit that I ever worked as a phone psychic, but hope that I can educate other intuitives on the perils of working for these companies.
