The conquest of the galaxy is moving forward, and we need expendable henchmen for Valco’s planned Death Star.
In other words, in order to be the world’s nicest evil corporation and serve our customers better, we’ve decided to open a customer service office in Kajjjaani and we’re looking for TWO people for part-time employment at this new base.
Why Kajjjaani? Because your future boss lady lives there, and it’s a short bike ride from the future headphone and Death Star factory in Puolanka.
In principle, you specifically could be Valco’s new henchperson if you meet these few conditions:
- You have nerves of steel. Most people who contact customer service are usually pretty pissed off. You need to understand that this anger isn’t aimed specifically at you, but mostly at us entrepreneurs who don’t want to receive those hate messages ourselves.
The deepest essence of henching is taking shit and bullets on behalf of the entrepreneur anyway, whether it’s an angry customer, the tax office, or some space wizard knight sabotaging the Death Star. A sense of humor helps in this job. Being from Savo does not automatically count as one.
- You can read and write, in at least Finnish and English. Math skills don’t matter that much (better for us). Knowledge of Germanic barbarian languages and other cryptic forms of communication is considered a plus. If you write extremely well and funny, you may have a chance to become an upper-class henchperson, meaning a second-class internet henchperson.
- You maybe understand something about technology. You know that electrical devices run on smoke. When the smoke comes out, the device no longer works. For a henchperson, the baseline required tech skill is knowing how to copy and paste. For example, a basic adult education computer course or simply having a computer at home pretty much qualifies you for this “demanding” expert role. Of course, we won’t hold it against you if you happen to be a self-taught audio and headphone guru with soldering skills. We’re just not prepared to pay extra for it.
- You’re ready to live in Kajjjaani, or at least work there. Sometimes you can work from home, as long as your home is in Kajjjaani or somewhere from which you can still be bothered to come work in Kajjjaani. Having done nothing but remote work for the entire existence of the company, we’ve come to the conclusion that remote work just makes people lazy. Naturally, the entrepreneurs will continue working remotely. You won’t.
- You are not especially stupid. A little stupid is fine, but not the kind who can’t understand instructions or think with their own brain. We need to be able to give you at least some responsibility. Physical limitations are not a problem in this job. Mental ones are.
BONUS SECTOR
We get excited about these skills and special talents, but we don’t specifically require them:
- Versatile language skills (though the working language is Finnish and 80% of customer messages come in Finnish)
- Experience with Gorgias, email, or some other similar customer service system
- Experience in cuztomer service work for consumers or businesses (online, by phone)
- Knowledge of some ecommerce platform, we use Shopify
- You dare to call people and answer the phone, because nobody here dares to or wants to
- You know how packages move from around the world to warehouses and from warehouses to customers
- Surprisingly solid computer skills, all kinds, starting from running an OnlyFans account
- Some kind of perversion for audio gear (or at least experience using headphones)
You do not need to be some young, dynamic team player with a positive attitude or whatever other bullsh*t usually appears in job ads.
We’re perfectly fine even with someone fed up with life and who’s seen it all, waiting for the glorious march toward disability retirement, who knows nothing about “internet buzz” but can keep replying diligently to annoyed people without immediately losing the will to live.
For someone intelligent and ambitious, Valco may even have some kind of career path to offer, but we can prove that people do just fine here without either.
We hope you’ll be available for a long time. If you’re planning, for example, to board a spaceship with your cult and travel to Alpha Centauri, or if you’ve joined the Peoples Temple, we assume these transitions won’t happen before the 2030s.
We intend to grow big and use a lot of henchpeople to do it, so naturally we don’t want to lose good henchpeople. Of course, the above only applies to you if you’re good. If you’re bad, you’re welcome to leave earlier.
WHAT HENCHING INCLUDES
- Replying to customers via the Gorgias customer service system or social media
- Phone customer service
- Helping out with service/repairs during peak rushes when needed
- Work is done from the office, sitting in front of a computer terminal
A practical workday could go something like this:
You wake up in the morning, scratch your ass, go to work, by car if the old Skoda starts, otherwise by bike uphill in the rain. At the office you make coffee and open your computer. You reply to the messages that came in overnight, talk shit with a coworker, make coffee, fire up Teams and join the weekly meeting. You pick your nose during the meeting because you forgot you’re on camera. After the meeting, while chewing on a lunch sandwich, you marvel to your coworkers at how f*cking stupid everyone else in this company is except us.
After lunch you answer more emails, a German customer annoys you, you complain to your coworker, they understand you. In the bathroom you watch cat videos and wonder whether the lunch sandwich had expired bologna in it. After the ordeal, sweaty, you return to your computer and answer emails. On a special day, you might get to do some exciting project, like updating the company’s partner list in Excel. You hope it’s a special day. Today isn’t.
The phone rings. It’s Marjatta, whose headphones aren’t making any sound. It turns out Marjatta doesn’t have any device to play music on. You explain to Marjatta that the headphones do not come with music preloaded in them, it has to come from somewhere else. Marjatta doesn’t understand. You’re pissed off.
The inbox is finally empty. You return home with an equally empty look on your face. You watch TV and eat blue sausage until you fall asleep on the couch. You got mustard on your shirt.
WHAT WE OFFER A THIRD-CLASS HENCHPERSON
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A third-class henchperson’s salary, roughly on par with supermarket cashier work or frying burgers (that is, €13-15/hour).
Starting pay won’t blow your mind, but Valco is a company where one day you might get a Porsche in the driveway, and if you work really hard, maybe even a Ferrari.
The entrepreneur already has a Porsche, you see, and would be very happy to buy a Ferrari once the company starts making more money. If you ask, he might come by to show it off sometime.
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Working hours: 20-37.5 hours per week depending on workload. In the ideal situation, of course, you do 40 hours of work in 20 hours, so the entrepreneur gets that Ferrari sooner.
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A reasonably easy job that suits almost anyone and sounds fancier than it really is. If you know how to reply to an email, you can probably do this job.
- Plenty of Valco products. Maybe also some other perks and bonuses, but few and far between. We don’t really have any employee benefits to speak of. We promise nothing, so you won’t be disappointed for no reason. Maybe a warm handshake.
- A computer terminal, some sort of office-like place to sit with a couple of others, and some fairly strange entrepreneurs. The work community is not dynamic or fun in the slightest, unlike in every other job ad.
- The job is mainly on weekdays between 8 and 20. Otherwise you could work in the middle of the night and on weekends, but collective agreements, laws and such get in the way.
- If you actually have some skills beyond turning rye bread into sh*t, then in a growing company it is theoretically possible to end up doing other jobs too. We don’t promise anything, though.
We’re not especially interested in answering the phone ourselves (that’s your job), so if you have any questions about the role, send an email to your future boss lady Aino – aino(at)valco.fi. Please send applications for this position, along with your CV, to aino(at)valco.fi. Open applications to hr(at)valco.fi
ps. We are currently looking for a Finnish-speaking customer service person in Kajaani, Finland. But if it feels like you might have something to offer Valco, you’re also welcome to send us open applications. Our intention is to hire between two and five million people over the next few years. Meaning at least two people, at most five million.
NOTE! Applications by 12 July 2024.
