It’s worked great for stopping the vinyl siding and insurance people, but is anyone else getting tons of non-profit organization calls?
In the past week, I’ve received several calls for donations from the Department of Public Safety, my university, amd a fundamentalist church. Also, I still get those recorded calls about debt consolidation. They even clog up the voicemail on my cellphone, which pisses me off to no end.
As much as I know this is a defense of the devil, I want to remind you that those telemarketers who ring you are not EVIL.
15 years ago (in London) I was one of them. I had one mission, to earn a living. I didn’t ring you to irritate the shit out of you (that was just a by-product). If you had ever held this soul destroying job for one minute your attitude would change.
When I get a telemarketing call I listen till they take that first breath (and those breaths are SCRIPTED!..that is how fucked these companies are) then I politely say I’m not interested and wish the caller a good day.
I feel no more need to be rude to them then I do to anyone who is doing a job. Those people ringing you are not Harvard grads…they are people trying to make ends meet.
Complain LOUDLY to the employer if you must but realise that you are talking to an actual person who HATES their job and treat them with a modicum of respect. We all have times in our lives when we can’t chose to be fussy about how we pay the rent. They are probably the same person who says “do you want fries with that” do you want to be rude? Or would you rather politely say no thanks.
Those breaths are scripted precisely because management knows that 90% of people called are not interested and will never be interested. They want their callers to get off those calls and onto potentials as quickly as possible. So you are not being rude by using that breath moment to ask the marketer to stop and take you off the list. They’d much rather you do it early and quickly - it allows them to move on down the list to someone who might bite.
If your caller doesn’t give you a pause, she’s a novice or an idiot and deserves to be spoken over. She’ll learn. You’ll never get someone to buy by bullying them.
Likewise, any telemarketer with half a brain is welcoming the do-not-call lists, as they are self-selecting and remove all those numbers at which no one ever bit anywy. That saves you the time and money of calling the No’s.
Yep, I used to be a telemarketer too. It sucks.
CITE!!!
Yeah, but everyone’s seen this, right? Don’t try to tell me that ClaudiaVonL has a mother - if she did, mom would have disowned her.
I make it a rule to be polite to telemarketers, and except for the occasional rude asshole, they’re usually polite back. I generally have a lot of sympathy for folks who work in a crappy job like that, and I know it’s the life ambition of only a very few people.
But still, it’s evident that there’s a few of ‘em that feel no compunction whatsoever about interrupting others’ lives, and advise the rest of us to get rid of our phones if we don’t want to be telemarketed at. Those people deserve every bit of abuse they get.
And some of them are muthers…
Oh, wait.
I recall once walking through an alley and two mid-teen thugs were riding their bikes. One was trying to get the other to join his telemarketing company (they probably had a “referrer” fee) and the amount of pride in his voice at working for a company that did $250 million was impressive.
I’d be willing to lay odds on neither of them working there after about six weeks.
I like to put them on speaker phone, let them give the entire spiel, then when they ask if I want the service, I say “No.” If they repeat or go on and ask again, I say “No.” See how many times I have to say “No” before they hang up. My personal best is 14.
Sometimes I just tell them to call back later and ask for “Mr. Meoff. First name Jack.” I’m always amazed when some of them actually do it.
The JOB involves interrupting lives. It is horrible from both sides of the phone. Be nice, they ain’t ringing cause they hate you.
Hear, hear. I’ve been there.
If getting telemarketing calls makes you angry, then imagine having to make them. For a 4 - 8 hour shift. Getting hung up on, verbal abuse, abuse by the supervisors if you take the first “no” as an answer. And knowing you can’t walk away because, well, that’s your paycheck. It’s one of the most depressing jobs in the world. You feel completely worthless, and most interactions with the people you call only reinforce that.
My recommendation is bitch to the people at the company that make the decisions to use telemarketing to get more sales. There’s nothing you can say to a telemarketer that will improve the situation. Call the main office of the company the marketers are repping for. At least that way, you’re expressing your frustration to a party that might possibly be able to do something about it. (They still probably won’t, telemarketing makes them money, but it’s more ethical than going up one side of a telemarketer and down the other.) And then get yourself on the do-not-call list.
But they do know that they are most obviously annoying and interrupting 97% of the people that they call. For that they deserve every bit of stress that can be heaped upon them.
For all of you “oh poor me, I was forced into a life of telemarketing” types responding to this thread, please accept a hardy “fuck you” from the bottom of my heart.
You can try to justify yourself any way you want. It still boils down to your decision to make money by annoying the shit out of people who did not deserve to put up with your shit.
I’ve never had to make my living doing telemarketing (THANK YOU LORD) but count me as another perosn who doesn’t hate the people doing it. At the first moment possible, I simply blurt out “Sorry, no interested, goodbye,” and hang up. I can’t imagine having to depend on a job like that for a living. :eek:
I usually try to be nice and polite to these folks. They’re schmucks with schmuck jobs, and I’m sure they each get more than their fair share of abuse. I politely thank them for their time and kind offer, and then I tell them I’m not interested.
Of course, I occasionally get a wild hair and the result is:
TM: Hello, may I speak with Mr. Magill?
Me: hi
TM: Hello, is Mr. Magill home?
Me: hi
TM: Hello?
Me: hi
TM: Is your daddy home?
Me: hi
TM: Can you get your daddy?
Me: hi
TH: Okay, can you tell your daddy the [political] party called?
Me: hi
TM: Bye-bye
Me: bye
You are right of course. I just know they don’t do it to annoy YOU but to earn a living.
There are many jobs that annoy the shit out of me…parking wardens, junk mail deliverers, tax department officials, annoying women in chemist shops with perfume samples etc.
Many jobs involve imposing on others. Those imposing are trying to earn a living they are not trying out a new annoy-the-shit-out-of-BubbaDog hobby.
MILLIONS of people have jobs they loathe. They have jobs to feed their families NOT to ruin your day. I’m not telling you to buy whatever shit they are selling, just realise it is a person on the end of the phone and say no thanks not FUCK OFF.
You’re not serious, right? I’ve worked as a telemarketer before; not because I wanted to, but because it was a source of income until I found something better. The other option was to go on welfare. The humanly decent thing to do would have been live off the state because telemarketing was beneath me? I hated that job with every ounce of my being, but at least I was earning my keep.
Yes, it is ‘just’ a job and yes, I understand that some (or even most) people take the job out of sheer desperation. Doesn’t make it any better.
If I took a shit on your front doorstep out of sheer desperation, it wouldn’t be any less stinky.
I have no sympathy whatever for the poor telemarketer. If they are truly desperate for the money, then they should get some sort of honest job, like prostitute, crack dealer, or child pornographer.
You know what sucks? Having a legitimate reason to call people at home and them automatically assuming you’re a telemarketer. Happily I’m not one of them, but most people in my office have to call potential employees of our clients with questions regarding their application (for a background check). Three or four times a day you hear one of them shout “I’m not a telemarketer!” before a soft “damn” when the person hangs up on them. You’d think if someone were trying to get a job they’d be a little more hospitable.
I tried to get the woman next to me to start all those phone calls with “I’m not a telemarketer” but apparently that’s been used by telemarketers too much.
Well I’m so glad for you and the job no one hates you for.
Being polite never killed anyone. Taking the piss out of someone because they are trying to make a living makes you the arsehole not them.
Well colour me unimpressed. If you think it is ethically or morally wrong to earn a living doing a shitty job that you probably do not enjoy, can you explain why? What if they can not get an equivalent job elsewhere? Would you suggest that they should go on welfare? If you think telemarketing is so bad, then write to your politician to get it banned. Untill you do, a big “fuck you sideways” for shitting on people who want to earn an honest living.
Since I cancelled my land line and started using just my cell phone, I haven’t gotten a single telemarketing call.
YMMV.