Most jobs are boring. I’d be surprised if most people didn’t consider their jobs mindbogglingly dull. I love baseball. That means I watch mindbogglingly dull things for fun. I don’t want telemarketers bored out of their jobs. I want them hating their jobs with every fiber of their beings.
Looking at your classified ads, I can tell you that US telemarketers are earning less than their UK counterparts. That $8-$9 an hour equates to £4.25-£5, whereas the average UK telemarketer gets £5-£6 an hour. (The UK national minimum wage for employees over 22 is £4.85 an hour, if you were wondering.)
I just noticed you were in the UK. Sorry about that. :smack:
U.S minimum wage is, I believe, $5.15.
Interesting. I saw this and my immediate conclusion was: Of course the telemarketers feel OK about being rude to me: they can’t see me. They’d never rudely interrupt my life that way if this were in person.
It’s rude to phone someone you don’t know to sell them something they don’t want.
[sub]come to think of it, it’s rude even if you do know them[/sub]
Whether someone is rude back or not is their choice, they don’t have some mystical obligation to be nice to someone who is being rude to them. Maybe the world would be a better place if everyone were nice to people who were rude to them, but it’s expecting too much.
No matter how large you make your letters, you’re still very confused about what exactly ARE the arguments of the other posters here.
No one, that I’ve seen, has said that moving telemarketing overseas and employing even cheaper labor isn’t bad. No one has said that the actual owners and managers of these companies aren’t bad.
What you don’t seem to get is that those facts STILL don’t change the facts about those who are actually doing the calling. Those include, but are not limited to:
People who have taken a job which is, by definition, going into people’s homes and annoying them. None of your “facts” about all of the other horrible stuff that could happen changes any of this.
No matter WHAT other evil exists in the telemarketing world, the callers themSELVES are still purposely being annoying and coming uninvited into our homes.
Whether or not they deserve punishment for this via their victims is another issue, but the FACT is, that what they are doing IS a BAD thing, whether legal or not. And regardless of worse evils within third world countries and/or the managment of telemarketing companies.
Personally, I believe the word of some of the former telemarketer posters who say (paraphrased) “there WERE other jobs, but this one was easier/paid a little more/was not on my feet/etc”, and I’m a teensy bit skeptical about the “there were NO OTHER jobs available” thing.
Jeeeeeeeeez I havn’t been back here in a few days but I can’t honestly believe the amount of manevolence some of you attribute to telemarketers. Do you really think they get a thrill in annoying you? They are doing a job for fucks sake! Get over it! Hang up if you must. Swear your frigging head off if you must but GET OVER IT.
Some of you need some actual problems to worry about. Some of us will continue to acknowledge that we can’t all have jobs we like.
I hope your mother never rings you at dinner time…she doesn’t deserve such hate
?? Was this directed at my post? Honestly, I don’t hate telemarketers at all, nor do I waste time on being rude to them. I don’t even have time to have fun with them as others have suggested. My usual answer is “thank you no”. If they persist and start the argumentative thingie, they merely get hung up on.
Being annoyed with does NOT equal hates. At least not for me. Though again, I can’t speak for the others here. My post was mainly targeting Evil Death’s illogical line of “this is MUCH worse, therefore your points don’t exist” argument.
For the record, regarding your “do you think they get a thrill out of annoying you”. No, I’m sure that it’s quite unpleasant on their end too. The point is not what they expect or deserve, but one of disproving their arguments of “it was the only job I could get, and I didn’t KNOW that it would annoy people”.
I am skeptical about the “only job” thing. (again, that doesn’t equal hatred of telemarketers). Other former telemarketers in this thread have said “it was easier or paid more”. There is always a job at McDonalds, or at a convenience store.
And I’m skeptical that someone could NOT know that calling people at the dinner hour and trying to sell them something would be annoying to those potential customers, particularly when, as described by several former telemarketers here, that “selling” generally involved the hard sell.
And again, annoy does NOT equal send into unreasoning murderous hatred, it means, at least in my case, Annoyed. Period. And what do people DO when they’re annoyed?
Well, some of them are going to show it, by being snotty or short with the person who annoyed them. Especially when too many of those people refuse to take “no thank you” for an answer. In my experience, more telemarketers than not, are of the hard sell/won’t take no for an answer genre.
And you are taking those people who do speak rudely to them to task for getting snotty right back at them, or hanging up on them?
No CanvasShoes that wasn’t directed at you, just at the thread in general (though for some reason I thought Miller was a lot cooler and calmer before this thread).
I’m glad you agree that being annoyed should not mean hate. I just think this thread shows some hate being annoyed a WHOLE lot and some of us can be annoyed and then get over it. The first group are the road ragers among us :D.
People don’t get jobs to annoy others (well maybe parking wardens ) they get jobs to pay the bills. The annoyance you suffer is just a bi-product of them paying the bills. I come from a “welfare state” and I think that is a good thing, but even I think the snide comments about it being better to be on welfare then be a telemarketer are just stupid.
I don’t believe it is worth being rude to anyone, but that’s just me. Your blood pressure is your own business (not yours personaly CanvasShoes, just “your” in the general sense). If you get something out of road rage or even house rage …go for it :).
Oh come on kiwi, you can do better than that; for one thing, my mother is not so ignorant as to phone at dinnertime and even if she did, there is the not insignificant fact that she’s my mother - a person I actually desire to speak with.
I don’t think anyone believes telemarketers get any joy out of annoying us. That doesn’t make it any less annoying.
I still don’t think the ‘hey, it’s a job’ thing justifies it; just because someone needs the money and tries really hard, doesn’t make it any less annoying that they should be able to interrupt me pointlessly several times a day (and yes, it is at least that frequently).
I had regretted starting this thread (it’s like a debate, but with all the decent bits taken out) and requested its closure, but the mods must not have seen it as necessary.
It would appear obvious we don’t have the same mother And I truly can’t do better then that. That’s all I’ve got. Pathetic eh…Hey maybe that is why I did the telemarketer thing
I still think many people have irritating jobs. Still way more have jobs we see below us (but we need them). Doesn’t leave those with few options much to chose from eh.
Bad, bad mods not letting the house rage die
I apologise for the smiley abuse.
It’s the telemarketer in me
One thing puzzles me, calm kiwi: you were an NZer in London and you WEREN’T working in a bar? C’mon, mate, you’re letting the side down here. So, how about those Black Caps, eh? Hat trick! {Mind you, I’d like to see them do it against the Aussies}
I suppose the whole of my annoyance stems from the unsolicited nature of the communication; I regard the telephone as a device solely for the convenience of my communication; I expect to receive calls from people who know me (in which case the interruption is nearly always acceptable) and I expect it to allow me to contact other people. I do not expect to be continually interrupted by undesired, unsolicited marketing calls.
If the answer were as simple as ‘well, just don’t answer it when it rings’ (I don’t think anyone has actually proposed this), that would be fine, but it would also be a reason simply not to have a telephone. Maybe that’s what I should do if I cannot stem the flow.
Pffffffffffttt. I said I did telemarketing for a month! I did barmaiding for 18 mths (some at the Chandos for those Londopers). I was working in a London pub when NZ won the first world cup…that annoyed far more people then telemarketing
(Go Black caps…yes I know I will regret that. Middlecase Aussies will notice this!)
My Telemarketer program:
Whatever they are selling killed my Grandparents yesterday, once I start I continue to talk over them without pausing "WHATTHEHELLISWRONGWITHYOUYOUSICKBASTARDSARETORTURINGME!click. It makes me feel better to give the Spawn of Satan a little mindfuck, maybe they will do society a favor and go get a real job. I know that I am going to get jumped on for this but my thought process is if you paid my phone bill I would not have such a big problem being disturbed but since I pay my phone bill I feel like I am being double screwed when a Telemarketer calls.
Unclviny
I agree Mangetout I expect to know who it is that is ringing me (though some are annoying anyway). I also expect to find letter adressed to me in my letter box, but guess what I find…AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH JUNK MAIL (I notice everyone picked apart my “do you want fries with that” example but no one touched the junk mail example).
I don’t fall into a rage if I don’t get what I expect though. I go hmmmmpff and move on. I never feel inspired to be rude though.
Well unless you live somewhere where they already rip you off you don’t pay for incoming calls.
But there’s the difference; when I find junk mail in my mailbox, it happens when I was looking in there anyway - it doesn’t interrupt what I was doing and so is far less annoying.
Yeah but when someone is on the phone and you hang up they are gone. It is rubbish day tomorrow and I have a whole bag of recycling that I just lugged up the drive that shows junk mail is harder to get rid of (and it doesn’t mind if you are rude to it either).
Makes no difference; you still had to get up, answer the phone and leave whatever it is you were doing.