Big Sean Had His Life Threatened as a Telemarketer

Being a prosthetic limbs telemarketer is arguably one of the worst possible jobs.

October 24, 2017

big sean — Image via Getty/Nicholas Hunt

Nothing thrusts you deep into existential anguish quite like moonlighting as a telemarketer. You're simultaneously working very hard to annoy total strangers over the phone and trying to suppress the knowledge that, yes—you, too, would hang up on someone offering you a timeshare in the Galapagos Islands or whatever the hell you're peddling. Just ask Big Sean.

Sean, who's spoken about his humble telemarketing beginnings in previous interviews, joined billionaire Dan Gilbert at the Gem Theatre in Detroit Monday to give 400 Detroit Public School Community District students career advice. "I used to get hung up on all the time," Sean recalled of his summers and after-school hours spent working as a prosthetic limbs telemarketer, according to the Detroit News. "I got death threats." For Gilbert, his pre-wealth days were spent delivering pizzas.

Sean, a Cass Technical High School alumnus, also advised students to treat their would-be losses as valuable learning experiences. "All the times you worked hard to have good grades, and all the times you failed a class, and had to come back and really boss yourself up and get it right, that’s what it's all about," he said.

The special event was dubbed Mogul-2-Mogul and is part of Sean and his mother Myra Anderson's Sean Anderson Foundation Mogul Prep program. The aim of the foundation is to help provide education, health, safety, and well-being for Detroit students and "disadvantaged youth" across the country. Monday, Sean thanked the city of Detroit for giving him his start. "Detroit was the first place where my music started popping, where I had my first sold-out shows," he said. "It was where I had my biggest shows. I love everybody from Detroit."