And that right there, ladies and gentlemen, says everything you need to know about the mind of a telemarketer.
No, that’s just common sense. Morality does not pay the bills. I’m sorry to sully your snow-white view of the world. Be nice if it did, but it doesn’t. The garbage man may wake you up and the car salesman may annoy you on the radio, but they’re just people doing their jobs. The fact that it is shit work does attract some assholes. I admitted that before and I’ll say it again. But don’t get up on some moral high horse, fucknugget.
IBM worked with the Nazis. Should everyone who works for IBM quit? How about current events: many companies pollute horribly, others have sweatshops or make products that endanger people’s lives. So now everyone in industrial manufacturing, textiles, brewing, tobacco, pharmacueticals, and oil refinement has to quit.
Telemarketing is more obviously unethical and broken than some of those examples, but again, telemarketers are not schemers out to make a quick buck off your annoyance, and most of them are not there because they’re too immoral and lazy to get a more respectable job in, say, the war industry. Like every adult human being who doesn’t live up a pole in the desert, they evaluate the dirtiness against their needs and resources and decide accordingly where the line is.
Hey, if money is more important to you than morality, common deceny, or simple courtesy, fine. Just don’t act all shocked and outraged when people treat you accordingly. Maybe you’re a pregnant high school drop-out with Down’s syndrome, and this is the only job you can possibly get. Well, guess what? WE DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOUR FUCKING LIFE! I’m sorry you’ve fucked up every life choice you’ve ever made to the extent that your only options are telemarketing or self-canabilization. That’s a real fucking shame, but that doesn’t give you an exemption from acting like a decent human. Stay the hell off my phone, you fuckin’ feeb. My sympathy for you ends when you decide your circumstances give you a special right to harrass me in my own home.
It says everything you need to know about the majority of the human race, to be honest. However, since the majority of the human race does not make a habit of phoning people when they are in the middle of a book/movie/meal/contorted sexual position/argument with their partner/good sleep or other private activity, they don’t tend to get quite the same emotionally loaded response as telemarketers.
When I was a starving student I did door-to-door sales for a while :eek: . It was the single crappiest job I have ever done, and as a result I can share with you the following interesting factoid:
Most humans don’t like being bugged at home, whether it be by door-to-door salespeople, telemarketers, noisy neighbours or their idiot relatives. This is not surprising, since ‘home’ is pretty much defined as ‘a place where I am safe from assholes pestering me’. If you don’t want people to go nuts at you, don’t disturb them in their lairs. If you do disturb them, unpleasantness is likely to ensue.
If you are getting paid to bug people at home, then remember:
Life sucks, buy a helmet.
Sweet. For those who haven’t clicked it yet
DirecTV has a market capitalization of $19.097 billion. This action will reduce it to $19.092 billion. The fine is so small, their executives will be reduced to fits of scornful laughter. They’ll write it off as a cost of doing business, and not even a large one. It will fit in on the income statement right below the cost of doughnuts for staff meetings.
Now if the fine were $5 billion, we’d be getting somewhere.
The difference between those industries and telemarketing is that those industries provided a valuable and needed service. Pollution is a big problem, but we still need to refine oil, or out civilization collapses. I’ve got my own complaints about the pharmaceuticals, but we still need medicines and new cures, even if some of the companies producing them are unethical. What would happen if all the telemarketing companies were shut down? What vital service or good would we, as a society, be missing out on?
And, like every adult human being, they get judged by other adult human beings for where they decide to draw that line, too. A starving man may be able to rationalize stealing a loaf of bread, but that doesn’t mean the baker has to like it.
Irony, thy name is Love Rhombus.
So let’s sum up the arguments in support of the telemarketers:
[ol]
[li]By owning a phone, you are willingly entering into a compact with any yokel who calls you to offer some unrequested service or unsolicited product to treat them with the utmost respect and courtesy, regardless of what personal or private activity, including productive work, that they may interrupt.[/li][li]Telemarketers are just people who need jobs, and therefore anything they do to earn money, up to and including cold calling random numbers and pressuring the elderly to purchase said products and services is automatically ethically and socially acceptible.[/li][li]Semi-literate high school dropouts and convicted felons cold calling and reading from a prepared script should be held in the same accord as professional manufacturer’s representatives and trained floor sales people who are offering products customers seek out to purchase.[/li][li]The fact that, and I quote from the original source of this whole metathread, “Wether I bother you during dinner hour is of no importance or significance to me whatsoever and I do not feel bad because YOU decided to answer your phone,” doesn’t excuse the recipient of said call from displaying the utmost in politeness and cordiality. [/li][li]Telemarketers have very stressful jobs, unlike anybody else in the world, and so when they do speak offensively or degradingly they should just be excused.[/li][li]Saying, “Do not call me” actually means, “Do not call me for the next week,” in the same way that saying, “I’m not interested in your proposition” means “please follow me around and harass me until I break down and accept your proposal.”[/li][li]If you disagree with any of the above then you are a manifestly self-indulgent narcissist who digs under your man-tits for Cheetos while sitting in your Barcolounger and who doesn’t have a care for the starving children in Africa or AIDS victims in Bangladesh, and therefore have no right to express any opinion on the topic.[/li][/ol]
Does this cover all the salient points, or did I miss anything?
And several posters have already made the offer, but I’ll do it here again, expressly and definitively: If you think that having strangers make unsolicited calls to you between the hours of 9.00a and 9.00p and pressure you to purchase their product or advocate their beliefs is acceptible, then post your phone number here, in this thread, for everyone else to call you for their own (perfectly legal) purposes. I’ve this sofa I’d like to get rid of, and instead of taking out an ad in the paper or posting it on craigslist, I’d like to call you three times a week at work and home and see if you’d be interested in buying it.
Put up or shut up. It’s that simple.
Stranger
It’ll probably mean Joe the mailroom boy won’t get his Christmas bonus.
The main issue with telemarketing is that the entire industry is based on violating very basic societal norms, as well as coercing the Free Market. Its very nature is predatory and immoral.
It is not an unreasonable expectation on my behalf that after a day of being subjected to forces that are trying to part me from my hard-earned money from the moment I start my commute to the moment that I close my door behind me, that I have earned the right to let my guard down in my own castle and only hear from people that I have already established some relationship with. The fact is that the telemarketers are praying on the fact that the vast majority of people were raised to not be rude. Be it as it may that an increasing number of people are being rude, the fact is that most of us still feel uncomfortable doing so even though we have tried other means and have been driven to it.
Further, I think that in a very simple supply/demand way it is abundantly clear that there is no demand for the “random fucktard calling me to rip me off” service. If such a demand did exist the Do Not Call list would be an opt in situation rather than an opt out situation.
So I really don’t know what you apologists want. The entire industry stands in defiance of our social contract and the clear indications of the Market. I think anger and scorn are pretty much a logical consequence here.
[hijack]Actually, is it moral to be polite? I’m not sure. Since you can be immoral and very polite…[/hijack]
All I’m asking for is a little sympathy for these people. Is that so hard? Yes, they’re annoying, unintentionally calling when that’s the last thing you want, but it really can’t be that big of a speedbump in your day. Why not, instead of being profane or abusive, ask to speak to their supervisors. If they just keep calling, report them instead of taking out your frustrations. If I get a call, I don’t know if some jackhole down the way hung up on them out of spite, causing me to have to listen to your angry tirades.
And Miller, I’m sorry that you never worked a crappy job in your life. Must be hard to orally pleasure yourself with the silver spoon in there, huh?
Don’t you still live with your parents? It’s easy for you to be sanctimonious, then.
Wow, it’s been a little over half a day and this thread already has over a hundred posts. I never thought it would take off like this. I can’t say any of it has changed my position, though, in fact it’s made me more pissed off at people who would contribute to this thread instead of one on like, the war or torture or something.
I do not believe that being called on the phone is harassment, I’m sorry but it’s just NOT. Next, you’ll be saying that email should be a private sanctuary, or your mailbox should be free from ads. The only thing I consider to be “sacred” is my front door, which is why I have a problem with door to door salesmen and missionaries, although I certainly wouldn’t threaten or rave at them. I am also wondering what the hell you all have done to get on so many calling lists. I use a cell phone now so I don’t get any calls, but when I had a land line it was five a month, tops, and almost none at really inconvenient hours. You all must have pissed off the wrong people or you’re blowing your call frequency way out of proportion. I’m thinking the latter.
And also, I have never had a telemarketer be abusive to me. Know why? Because I don’t give them the chance! To get their abuse, you must all be stringing them along, staying on the line just so you can hurl insults at them at opportune moments. What exactly have these telemarketers SAID that hurt your widdle feelings so much? Can you honestly say their comments were unprovoked? Please provide an exact transcript.
Oh, and Mr. Blue Sky? I’ll be sure to remember your little death threat. I wish that woman would have called the cops on you. Do us all a favor and impale yourself on your Xmas tree.
Sorry, but I think that the average Doper is a lot creepier than the average telemarketer. I mean we had someone in this thread tell a woman to die in front of her kids. Sorry, but I’d take a call from a person just punching a timeclock over one of you sociopaths.
davenportavenger, Why is it an unreasonable request for me to make that I not get telemarketing calls, spam email or junk mail? It is clear that these are not things that the vast majority of consumers want, so why can’t we not get them?
No service. That’s why I think they should be shut down. I just don’t think that even every single worker quitting would result in them shutting down, or that the workers’ failure to quit automatically means they are a lazy villain, any more than someone who makes zillions of dollars courageously supporting civilization in the oil business is automatically an industrious villain.
Fair enough. I disagree with the judgment and find it somewhat irrational. I’d find the line for, say, helping making devices intended to cause human bodies to explode and die to be way higher than for annoying people in their homes, but not even people who don’t think war is necessary don’t rant about how those who work in weapons should all quit or be called moral imbeciles and murderers.
Such statements would be ignorant of the realities of the situation, like that if they did all quit the war would not end.
How is “I hope you die” a death threat?
You’re an idiot.
Boy, I’m really stung by the accusation that I’m so massively well-endowed that I’m able to perform oral sex on myself. That’s one heck of a devastating insult you’ve crafted there. With such a scintillating wit and towering intellect, it’s no wonder you ended up in telemarketing! What’s your current job, anyway? Do you volunteer for medical experiments?
This post is killing me. I pay the garbage man to come and take my garbage away. We already have an agreement: he takes away my garbage, I don’t have to store it in my house. The sound of the garbage man means I don’t have to live in filth this week. It’s all good.
The second part of your statement is even better. I’m going to quote it again:
The car salesman paid to advertise on the radio. Because he did that, I get to listen for free!! Sounds too good to be true, I know. Now, if telemarketers payed my phone bill in return for bugging me at random points throughout the day, this analogy might (sort of) make sense.