Yes, by taking advantage of the senile and those with Alzheimers- many victims of Telemarketers are the elderly. So nice. :rolleyes:
They don’t have to be criminals or scum to work. They can pick crops or sell radios or flip burgers. I suppose you’d have us forgive drug dealers as after all, they are only 'earning a living". :rolleyes:
“Ignorance of the law is no excuse”.
Diosa, I love your rants. It’s mind-boggling how much shit people give you for being a smart, professional woman. Does it smell like 1840s Alabama in here to anyone else?
That’s no reason they need to act like women can’t have jobs more important than making appointments and polishing knobs, and call people they don’t know “honey” or “sweetie”.
I once did a volunteer bit for an LGBT center where I called people who had donated the last year and sweetly asked them the lines on the page in front of me, about whether they’d like to donate, how to donate, what the money would be going for, etc. It sucked calling people and spewing the same crap over and over, but I don’t feel a bit of sorrow for telemarketers who are condescending and rude and sexist. I go to a community college where the vast majority of my classmates and friends (myself included) are mightily poor, and I know not a single person who’s ever had to stoop to calling people and insulting them because of the chromosomes they were born with in order to sell something. Anyone who has a Social Security number and feels they have to work a job like that isn’t trying hard enough, IMO. McDonald’s is everywhere, as are AMC, Blockbuster, Burger King, Wal-Mart, Target, Sears, etc. etc. I once dated an illegal immigrant who worked far classier jobs than telemarketing despite having no form of ID except for a Mexican Consulate card.
Brilliant! I’d love to have you on my debate team.
Nor does having low enough ethical standards to show up for work every day and tell female vice presidents they can’t have any standing in their business (ironic, isn’t it?) because they don’t have a pee-pee.
He’s making a pun, based on the fact that “man” also means “human”, as in “either man or woman or both”.
How many of those people annoy you as a job requirement, and read sexist and demeaning scripts to you to try to fool you into buying something that turns out to be different from what they’re offering, and have low enough moral standards to keep doing the job anyway? I have known not one retail, candy machine, or restaurant worker who does that. Not one. Ever. And as a 19-year-old college student, I’m close friends with a lot of retail and restaurant people.
Wow! That’s very interesting. I’m sure the next time you’re wrongly accused of fudging your taxes or sabotaging a car, you’ll refuse to deal with tax workers and lawyers because they’re a drian on society, right? Are you fucking shitting me? Without lawyers and law we wouldn’t be able to turn on the TV without the Queen’s permission.
Now listen, I’m not one to dismiss unpopular arguments out of hand. I’ve been known to take VERY controversial stances on things that are out of most peoples’ realm of understanding. But I’ve got to tell you that you’re out of touch with the world. The fairyland you live in does not intersect with the Earth I make my home in.
:eek: There are no words.
Ah, yes, of course. The omnipresent, all-seeing, all-knowing authorities who have already eliminated all crime and immoral behavior in the United States.
This bears repeating (it is the same with respect). I’ll make a caveat. You (whomever) will get it (civility and respect), but if you don’t return it, you won’t get it a second time.
You misunderstand the law, Lissa.
When you put yourself on the DNC list, the only telemarketers that are allowed to call you are those with whom you have a pre-established business relationship. If you purchase a product from Snorpclo, Inc., then you have given Snorpclo–and only Snorpclo–permission to call you. You’re still on the DNC list, and everybody but Snorpclo has to follow it. Buying from Snorpclo doesn’t give Snodfart Corp permission to call you, and putting yourself back on the DNC list changes nothing.
I don’t like telemarketers, and a quick “No thank you” followed by a hangup works.
I don’t mind the surveys. I had a call recently from someone who said they were from Right to Life and wanted to know if I was pro-choice, pro-life, or somewhere in between.
When I answered pro-choice, he couldn’t get off the phone fast enough.
Not quite. There’s a loophole that companies are using so extensively it’s almost undercutting the Do-Not-Call list.
The ‘prior business relationship’ exception applies to Snorpclo, Inc., AND to any other companies affiliated with Snorpclo.
So any subsiduaries they may have.
Or if they are owned by MegaCorp, all other subsiduaries of MegaCorp can also call you.
Or if Snorpclo, instead of selling the list to other companies (who would have to honor the DNC list), enters into a joint venture with another company (like the other company calls you, and Snorpclo gets x% commission on each buyer), then that other company is an ‘affiliated company’ and they can call you despite the DNC.
This can result in a whole lot of companies that can claim to have a ‘prior business relationship’ with you!
To some extent. Of course, the “business relationship” has to go beyond simply selling you a single item, it has to be something like being your telephone co, your bank, your credit card co, etc. And, if they are going to allow “affiliated companies” to call you, then that will be disclosed to you in a disclosure statement, and you can opt out in a variety of ways- telling Snorpclo to go fuck itself as you are changing providers is an excellent way to do this.
And, unlike what Lissa said, re-adding yourself to the Fed DNC list doesn’t do anything about a company you have a business relationshiop with . In fact AFAIK, “renewing” your number to the DNC list does nothing at all good for you.
If you do have a relationship with Snorpclo, and Megacorp (which owns Snorpclo) calls you, you can ask to be put on Megacorps DNC list.
I’ve been on the DNC list since they started it. I haven’t gotten any calls at home at all.
I still occasionally get them at work though. And back before the DNC I remember one particular young lady who got very angry, when after listening to her spiel, I still wasn’t interested.
It was about a vacation special they’d sent on one of those “uses an entire page of HUGE BLACK INK GRAPHICS” faxes, I called just to see what all the fuss was about. $99 bucks from here to Florida? I pretty much figured it was a scam, but I thought It was worth at least a call (1-800 number).
I guess that wasn’t so much a telemarketer as a faxmarketer though?
I used to be a telemarketer for a large book company. We never decieved people about why we were selling, and 95% of the time we were calling current members. The managers were always listening, so if you were rude, you were in trouble. It was entirely legitimate. Did we annoy people? Sure, but not as many as you’d expect. Though I didn’t think calling on Christmas Eve was a good idea.
I hated it, even though we got 50 cent books from a store in the building.
I didn’t see why we had to dress nicely, since no one could see us. And the boss was a cheerleading, sanctimonius piece of crap who wouldn’t shut up about Texas, where he’d been transfered from to manage us.
I lost my job there because of the DNC list and I don’t regret it. It wasn’t the worst job in the world, but it wasn’t a bowl of cherries either, and I’ll never do it again.
Even worse was fundraising for the MDA. Actually, now that I think about it, they were a lot alike.
I don’t understand why some people keep saying “but these are for people who can’t GET any other job”.
Not waitressing? Not clerking in a convenience store? Not a car Wash? (cue Rose Royce), not a stick picker in a park?
Come On.
The people I worked with took it because there wasn’t heavy lifting and you weren’t on your feet, it was better than minimum wage, and you could get home before rush hour. It was psycologicaly exhausting, however, which did make for a high turnover rate.
Again, I’m not defending the business as much as I am pointing out that a few horror stories about telemarketing should not cause you to think that they’re all bad. Can they be annoying? Sure. Do I wish it, as an industry, didn’t exist? Definitaly. Do I hold any grudges against the individuals manning those phones? No. The managers and others up the food chain? Yes.
She hung up on us. How rude.
I’ve been a telemarketer. (Also a telephone researcher, about a step and a half up from that).
If you’re going to take such a job because you desperately need a job and can’t get a gig selling crack or peddling your assets and are therefore forced to take on demeaning and unethical work such as this, you just have to accept hatred, vitriol, contempt, and verbal abuse as your just due, and go on to the next call. I did. I admired the folks who told me to get off the damn phone and go screw my mom, whereas I had no respect for the folks who would stay on the line with me and let some telemarketer tie up their line and make an unsolicited sales pitch at them.
(Telemarketers aren’t as bad as email spammers though).
Well, okay then, they didn’t take it because there Was No Other Job. They took it because they considered it easier, or not “beneath them” or some such.
I don’t bear any particular ill will against those who take the job, I just disagree that they had no choice as is often the supposed “cause” in these threads and IRL discussions.
On several occassions I’ve so offended telemarketers that they actually called me back to yell at or threaten me.
If you don’t believe me do a search for “msmith537” in The Pit.
Usually I just can’t be bothered and wordlessly hang up the phone.
Look, I think telemarketers are a drain on society too. But, dude, you really think people should be compelled to whore themselves or sell crack first? Illegal activities like this are less of a drain than bothering someone during dinner? Can we get a little perspective here?
I work in the call center industry. If I got laid off and couldn’t find work, I’d rather do a lot of things than telemarketing, and even for less money (like retail or probably even food service). Dangerous and illegal activities aren’t among them, and I don’t have the looks to get hired on by one of those legal brothel operations!
Hyperbole is not the championship game of the Arena Football League, in case you were wondering.
That is partially true. In my situation, it was the only job I could get that paid enough for me to live on. Waiting tables? Not an option, I was just trying to get back to work after being very sick and out of work. Couldn’t possibly stand and walk for that long. Store clerk, same. Car wash, same. park, same.
It was the only job I could get that I could work parttime and therefore not exhaust myself to the point that I was back in the hospital and still make 12-18 per hour. I would only accept public assistance if there were no (legal) options still available.
A friend of mine did it because she could have flexible hours and make 20-28 per hour, which she did every week. I wouldn’t say ‘can’t get any other job’ is always the reason, but for some of us it was true.
Oddly enough, all hyperbole aside, I think prostitution and most drugs should be legalized. And I think telemarketing should be outlawed. So, yeah, I think telemarketing is a bigger social negative than legalized, regulated sex work or drug trade would be.
$20 to $28 an hour?
Okay then. You just proved MORE of my point. They’re not doing it because they “can’t get ANY other job”. As to the not being able to stand for long periods of time. There is always Kelly Girl etc.
But again, if a person won’t take that over being a telemarketer, it is NOT because they couldn’t get anything else. What I’m disagreeing with here is the sympathy angle some are always bringing into these telemarketer discussions.
So far, in this thread alone, the persons who’ve worked as telemarketers have themselves disproved the idea that it is that there Is No Other Job they could have gotten, but rather it is a matter of higher pay, or ease of work or some such.