Telemarketer haters should suck it up

[Love_Rhombus]

@Stranger On A Train

Irony, thy name is Love Rhombus.

So does that mean I should change my name?

@Stranger On A Train

So let’s sum up the arguments in support of the telemarketers:

[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]

My point here was, we don’t know what we’re interrupting by calling, so the offence there is not intentional. It’s still damn annoying, I know that, but not planned.

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]

[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][/QUOTE]

Did I say it was? I myself turned down several sales that would have been easy based on the person’s age. I was pressured to make those sales by my management, but it got me a stern talking to and cost me a raise.

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]

[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][/QUOTE]

Again, I never said that. Others may have, I didn’t. It is a shit job and doesn’t always attract the best and the brightest.

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
[li]The fact that, and I quote from the original source of this whole metathread, “Whether 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][/QUOTE]

See above. I understand your frustration, I’ve simply suggested that you are all taking the hate to an unneeded and childish extreme.

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
[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][/QUOTE]

Yes, it’s very fucking stressful. I never gave that as an excuse, because it isn’'t one, but it is a possible explaination for the rudeness. Not an excuse. An explanation.

@Stranger On A Train

[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]

I seem to recall mentioning that this was what we were TRAINED TO DO. If it feeds your persecution complex, tough shit. It’s the nature of the shitty business.

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
[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][/QUOTE]

Now this is just silly.

@Stranger On A Train

[/list]
Does this cover all the salient points, or did I miss anything?
Stranger

Yes, and so have several other people. A sense of proportion.

@Stranger On A Train

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

Hell, no. I don’t like being called by them any more than you do. I’m just sympathetic to them and able to hold my temper when small annoyances rear their head, not fill my diaper like some here seem incapable of not doing.

[Love_Rhombus]

@Miller

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?

Actually, I thought that was a pretty good one. Can you give me a better? Too bad I don’t spend time and brainpower thinking of ways to belittle others. There’s a valuable job skill for you.

[Steve_MB]

@Mr. Blue Sky

While telemarketers themselves may not be scum individually, the industry is scummy. The workers are scummy by association.

Yep. The only reason to use telemarketing rather than legitimate forms of advertising is to sell stuff to people with impaired judgement and/or weaknesses of personality that make them particularly vulnerable to high-pressure tactics.

[davenportavenger]

@Binarydrone

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?

I’d rather not have to watch commercials. I wager to say that the vast majority of television viewers don’t like commercials. I have very rarely been compelled to buy something because it was on a commercial, I usually flip the channel. Does that mean I have the right to be abusive against television stations for daring to show those annoying things?

I hate billboards. I think they ruin the beauty of the landscape when they’re in the country, and make the city look tacky. I have never bought something because it was advertised on a billboard. Does that mean I should verbally harass the workers who go to change the signs every month?

Life is full of little inconveniences. People only pick on telemarketers (and door-to-door people) because they have a direct line to them, whereas they don’t to the makers of commercials, billboards, and other annoying things. The thing is, when you abuse a telemarketer, you’re not doing anything but harming a low-level employee, just like if you were to harass the guy who paints the billboard right outside your house. If you are really pissed off, ask to talk to the supervisor and make sure your name gets off the list for good. But a low-level drone can’t do that. They can’t effect change. Abusing them does nothing to help the cause of getting advertising out of your life, just like talking to the flunky at the TV station won’t get commercials taken off the air.

And personally, I find telemarketing to be one of the least wasteful and intrusive forms of marketing. I hate having to throw out tons of ads every week; it makes me cringe to see how much paper is wasted in the cause of advertising. I hate commercials even more because even though I’ve already made the decision not to buy, I can’t just say “no thank you” and have the commercial disappear, the way I can make telemarketing calls disappear. Maybe I’d feel differently if I considered my phone Sacred, but I don’t. It’s just a tool, like some of you. And I’ve also never heard of someone having their phone bill run up because of telemarketing, not even my parents, who got a lot more calls than I used to on my land line. Most plans give you like a bajillion free minutes and most telemarketing companies operate out of a 1-800 code anyway. So that’s a weak excuse.

[Steve_MB]

@Martin Hyde

Unless you’re just completely anti-capitalist I don’t see the justification in telemarketer hate.

You have it completely bass ackwards. If you are a communist (and therefore believe that the telephone belongs to the State or the People or whatever) then you have no grounds to obejct to telemarketing. If you are a capitalist (and therefore believe that the phone you pay for belongs to you) then there is no reason why you should tolerate the use of your private property to create a nuisance.

[davenportavenger]

@Steve MB

You have it completely bass ackwards. If you are a communist (and therefore believe that the telephone belongs to the State or the People or whatever) then you have no grounds to obejct to telemarketing. If you are a capitalist (and therefore believe that the phone you pay for belongs to you) then there is no reason why you should tolerate the use of your private property to create a nuisance.

Okay, so are you also against unsolicited mail ads? I get about twenty of those things a week. Or are you going to use some lame excuse like “well, you don’t really OWN your mailbox, the government does so anyone can put anything they want in it.”

[Steve_MB]

@fluiddruid

My big problem with telemarketing is that their industry fought so hard against the opt-out.

And before that, they used phone-phreaking methods to prevent people from screening them out with devices like the TeleZapper[tm]. And before it was prohibited for obvious safety reasons, they used recordings that grabbed the recipients line and continuously re-rang it if the recipient hung up. And before that, they routinely ignored requests to stop calling.

The bottom line is that the telemarketing industry has long ago forfeited any claim it might ever have had to standing as legitimate business.

If they’re just trying to make a living selling to people who, apparently, want to be contacted by telemarketers, then why fight it?

It’s because their industry tends to be predatory – on the mentally incapacited, elderly, lonely, or otherwise vulnerable parts of society. Their might be legitimate people who market by e-mail, but the majority of spammers are borderline illegal or worse.

It’s immoral that companies could be asked “Don’t call me again”, and they’d just sell your name to another company.

It’s immoral to not offer a practical opt-out for marketing that wastes people’s time and energy (until finally strong-armed by the government to implement it against their objections).

I can’t think of anything to add to that. Bravo!

[EddyTeddyFreddy]

@cthiax

Very, very few people take jobs to fulfill their supervillain fantasies of selling things to angry, half-naked people first thing in the morning.

Ah. No wonder it was so easy getting that job.

[Binarydrone]

davenportavenger, Your examples are just not analogous. In the case of billboards or television commercials and the like, the marketers are paying to use the service. This is why broadcast television and radio is free and why cable and the like costs less than it should if we were all paying to maintain the network. We, as a society, have collectively agreed that the benefit is worth the cost.

Telephones and email are services that I pay for specifically for my ease and convenience. There have been models (I am thinking of NetZero) that have used ads to subsidize the service and therefore offer it free, but mine is not such an ISP or phone company. I have not (and more importantly society as an entity has not) agreed that these services should exist for any other reason than to communicate with persons and entities with which we have established a relationship.

The fact that, at the end of the day, it is a minor inconvenience to interrupt a sales pitch, tell them to put me on the do not call list and hang up or delete spam in no way mitigates the fact that these things should not exist, are predatory and ultimately immoral.

[Binarydrone]

@davenportavenger

Okay, so are you also against unsolicited mail ads? I get about twenty of those things a week. Or are you going to use some lame excuse like “well, you don’t really OWN your mailbox, the government does so anyone can put anything they want in it.”

Again, though, the people sending the mail are paying to do so and (it is my understanding) the money that they spend is part of the reason that postage is not a hell of a lot more expensive.

[little_bit]

@davenportavenger

I’d rather not have to watch commercials. I wager to say that the vast majority of television viewers don’t like commercials. I have very rarely been compelled to buy something because it was on a commercial, I usually flip the channel. Does that mean I have the right to be abusive against television stations for daring to show those annoying things?

@davenportavenger

Okay, so are you also against unsolicited mail ads? I get about twenty of those things a week. Or are you going to use some lame excuse like “well, you don’t really OWN your mailbox, the government does so anyone can put anything they want in it.”

The problem with these arguments is the cost of these advertisements subsidizes your use of these mediums. Commercials pay for the cost of producing the programming & Bulk mail keeps the cost of mail lower. Most people don’t want to pay fedex prices for every letter they mail.

[sciurophobic]

@smiling bandit

Forgot to add:

Moreover, people who come to my door are a wee bit different. They’re usually local, doing fundraising, and if you say “no,” they don’t come back.

They’re fucking worse, especially the ones selling magazines. No I don’t care that you’re working your way through college, I don’t want any goddamn magazines. I don’t care if it’s for a good cause, go away. No I won’t be buying any, go the fuck away. Telemarketers are well-mannered compared to those pests.

[little_bit]

Poop. How did that take so long to post???

Yeah! what Binary said…

[Steve_MB]

@Renob

It’s great that you think your desire to not be offered products and services by phone outweighs the right of someone to have a job.

There is such a thing as a right not to be pestered by trespassers on one’s own property. There is no such thing as a right to have a job. QED.

[Freddy_the_Pig]

@davenportavenger

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.

You’re contributing to it. In fact, you started it. Why did you start it if you were going to be pissed off at people who contributed to it?

[little_bit]

@sciurophobic

They’re fucking worse, especially the ones selling magazines. No I don’t care that you’re working your way through college, I don’t want any goddamn magazines. I don’t care if it’s for a good cause, go away. No I won’t be buying any, go the fuck away. Telemarketers are well-mannered compared to those pests.

I’ve found that posting a “No Soliciting” sign will keep most away.
Another one below it that says…
"If I answer my door & I don’t know you, pray you run faster than my dog" works.
btw, i don’t even own a dog.

[Binarydrone]

@Freddy the Pig

You’re contributing to it. In fact, you started it. Why did you start it if you were going to be pissed off at people who contributed to it?

It’s all part of a larger plan to be a stupid cock. First, you take a pointless stance in opposition to what you know damn well is the prevailing opinion, then you use the fact that people are calling you on it as proof that you should not respect what they have to say. It is really pretty neat and self-contained.

[davenportavenger]

@Freddy the Pig

You’re contributing to it. In fact, you started it. Why did you start it if you were going to be pissed off at people who contributed to it?

Miller said that he didn’t want to hijack the thread posted in the OP. I’m not complaining about it (though I am saying some people’s priorities are out of whack), I’m just surprised. I didn’t know telemarketing was such a hotspot. The only subject that might have moved faster is a thread about my transsexual neighbor who declaws her cats.

@Steve MB

There is such a thing as a right not to be pestered by trespassers on one’s own property.

I don’t believe a phone connection counts as property. I believe it is on the level of a mailbox. And all those people justifying bulk mailing because it makes mail cheaper: would you say the same thing if, somehow, it was rigged so that telemarketing did the same thing, lowered phone costs? Because if so then a gold star for consistency, but I have the feeling that a lot of you would still be bitching because someone interrupted your rerun of Wings.

[Miller]

@davenportavenger

I don’t believe a phone connection counts as property.

Why not? I’m paying for it, aren’t I? And no one else is. You aren’t. Telemarketers sure aren’t. How is my phone connection not my property? Please defend this statement: I’m fascinated by what you consider “logic.”

I believe it is on the level of a mailbox. And all those people justifying bulk mailing because it makes mail cheaper: would you say the same thing if, somehow, it was rigged so that telemarketing did the same thing, lowered phone costs?

Hey, what if, every time someone cussed out a telemarketer, a starving child in Africa were fed? Bet you wouldn’t be so high and mighty about it then, would you?

[davenportavenger]

@Binarydrone

It’s all part of a larger plan to be a stupid cock. First, you take a pointless stance in opposition to what you know damn well is the prevailing opinion, then you use the fact that people are calling you on it as proof that you should not respect what they have to say. It is really pretty neat and self-contained.

Dude, chill pill. Now.