thank god, I noticed something. when a ‘chill research job’ offer turn… | by Orcasea | Sep, 2025

on one fine day afternoon, i got chat from my friend (it’s a he)

He said “hey hello! I have a freelance job opportunity that we can do together. It’s flexible and chill job. All you have to do is just casually chat mostly with some boomers generation and ask their opinion”.

Wooo sounds interesting

So then I asked Chatgpt, is there really any that kind of job in Indonesia?

Yes, there are.

It mentioned: Focus Group Disscussion moderator, Survey interviewer, Community researcher

I dove further.

I found out that these kind of job actually exist to help out research institutions and research agencies when they have too many projects and big projects to work on.

So, I got even more excited about this freelance job because I used to do this kind of stuff back in my first year.

We agreed to meet up the next day on Google Meet so he could give me more information about the job.

There it came, to meet the day of truth revealance.

Me, him, and his co-worker (a she) gathered in google meet.

First, they asked me a bunch of questions about my dreams, my goal, my current activities to find out my way of thinking and deciding something. So I answered enthusiastically, still assuming I was gonna be some kind of cool freelance interviewer.

Then a few minutes passed, they started to talk and present the job explanation.

They went on — basically giving me a lecture on some concerning facts about Indonesian’s average income, how Indonesian people don’t earn enough money, how most Indonesians don’t have a secure life guarantee for the future, even to afford a house, and how Indonesian people get really confused about their life on old days…

I assume you can already guess where this conversation was going —

They showed me graphs and statistics to support their argument. They showed me how their services could solve the problems they mentioned before. Something about how they collect money from people and then kinda give it back if those people urgently need it.

And here’s come the real deal, they told me what I’d have to do if I landed this job. I would have to do presentations and meetings with potential clients, setting up appointments. The pay is based on commisions.. And if I successfully closed a deal with a client, I would get paid.

At that point, my brain was like: uhhh wait… isn’t this just… insurance?
(Sorry, I’m not a finance major, so my brain was running on Windows 98, needed extra loading time)

Then, they showed me some “success stories” — photos of all the people who became successful from this job.

They were posing beside shining, incredible, glowing cars —

doing meetings in fancy glass-walled offices,

and group photos with such fancy clothes and expensive bags.

They also showed me some huge numbers, aka the potential income I could receive if I became a successor—

numbers that were TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE to get in such a short amount of time.

After that, we wrapped up the talk, and they told me to just chat them if I was interested in the job.

I tried to process and reflect on all the information I got.

At this point, I was pretty sure this was an insurance agent job but rebranded with prettier words and vocabularies.

I then asked some other friends whether they had heard about this job and this company to do some crosschecks.

AND it turns out I heard all sorts of stories — well, mostly not very comfortable ones.

I also asked Gemini. And it confirmed all my suspicions and all the stories from my other friends.

It broke down the pros and cons, how that industry works, why they need zero-experience students like me, how the detailed information about the recruitment, the targets or KPI, and the payment process works, and how most people would react if they heard about an “agen asuransi”.

So yeah, because I had already consumed all information.

I rejected their offer.

Because I know this job is beyond my skills and capabilities, and I’m just not ready to take on those kinds of risks right now.

To be honest, what disappointed me the most wasn’t the job itself, but the yapping yapping way before they got to the point.

I was genuinely interested in the initial ‘chill research job’ offer.

So, when the conversation took a sharp turn into the world of sales, targets, and commissions —

It felt more like a prank, where is the ‘just casually chat job’ you mentioned before?