# Telemarketers deserve death... **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 30, 2003, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telemarketers-deserve-death/151687 "2003-01-30T19:36:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2004, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telemarketers-deserve-death/151687/101 "2004-03-09T01:26:09Z")
> [@askeptic](#): > > All I am suggesting is do we really need to contribute to the level on incivility in our society? I know you may think you just let them have it with a real zinger, but I promise you they have heard worse, and even more creative, and more scary. They are not going to quit their jobs over it. That being the case what is wrong with just being decent and saying “No Thank You, Please do not call again, and take me off your list” You will accomplish more than you will by berrating them. A. I’ve actually made telespammers cry. I take some pride in that. They’re deserving of the same “courtesy” that any thief\* deserves. Would you advocate being civil to a purse-snatcher? Or a burgaler? B. Having worked in (inbound only, thanks) call-centers for about 10 years, the single _biggest_ thing that makes reps quit is the hostility they get. By raising the level of hostility, presumably I’m making them more likely to quit. C. In _any_ call-center, recruiting and training new reps is a major expense. I have no illusions that the telespammer I’ve just verbally savaged and hopefully prompted to quit will break the company but every little bit helps. Fenris \*time, resources and money (caller-id for one expense) ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2004, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telemarketers-deserve-death/151687/102 "2004-03-09T01:32:12Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > I only hope those people have found a more productive role in American society, such as crack whore or welfare cheat. Bwahahahah! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2004, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telemarketers-deserve-death/151687/103 "2004-03-09T02:00:34Z")
> [@askeptic](#): > > Did you not get my point? I realize that my suggestion of a response may not be effective. Do you suggest that telling them off is any more effective? If you are presented with two possible courses of action, is it not better, though to some less satisfying, to choose the civil option. You will certainly gain nothing by being rude. In fact I would be willing to bet the telemarketers have contests to see who can piss somebody off the most. Do you like thinking of yourself as the butt of their jokes? Oh, I got your point. Does telling them off help? No. Does being nice help? No. About two years ago I had a one-year subscription to _Popular Science_. I let it lapse because the magazine just didn’t interest me anymore. Three months after the end, I started getting calls from them asking me to restart my subscription. I kindly told them no and asked would they please not call me anymore. They agreed. Until the next week. And the following week. And then 3-5 times each week for a month. Everytime I asked to speak to a “supervisor”, he (and it was always a he) explained that the person who had promised me that I wouldn’t get any more calls didn’t work there (imagine my shock :rolleyes:). HE then promised that I wouldn’t get anymore calls. And I didn’t. That week. I did the next week and the week after that. I had finally had enough and let loose with a barrage of unplesantries. I never gave the last “supervisor” a chance to get in a word edgewise other than a guaranttee that I would never get another call. And I didn’t. Ever. Do telemarketers have such contests? Possibly, but since profit is all that matters, I doubt it would be tolerated much. And now with the DNC list, it is highly unlikely. Now if I could just get those damnable “survey” companies from calling me… ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2004, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telemarketers-deserve-death/151687/104 "2004-03-09T02:06:05Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Believe me, **askeptic** , the last thing I care about in the world is the opinions or feelings of a telemarketer. I make fun of them purely for my own enjoyment. This is entirely seperate from my efforts to put a permanent end to their sordid little careers. You know, these are human beings you’re talking about. I can understand being angry about the invasion of your privacy and the waste of your time, I can even understand losing your temper after one too many unwanted calls, but I can’t understand actually taking _pleasure_ in verbally abusing someone who probably has a miserable life already. It’s not like telemarketers are bored pranksters who are calling you up for kicks. The person on the other end of the line was desperate enough to accept a job that they knew was considered lower than prostitution and barely above selling crack to children. If it weren’t for the ironic fact that prostitutes are far more likely to be murdered by clients than telemarketers, I’m sure many people would actually prefer to follow that career path. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2004, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telemarketers-deserve-death/151687/105 "2004-03-09T02:16:12Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > The person on the other end of the line was desperate enough to accept a job that they knew was considered lower than prostitution and barely above selling crack to children. And they knew that verbal abuse was part of the job. ---
**Author:** ![Windwalker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/5e9695/32.png) [@Windwalker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Windwalker)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2004, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telemarketers-deserve-death/151687/106 "2004-03-09T03:25:43Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > It’s not like telemarketers are bored pranksters who are calling you up for kicks. The person on the other end of the line was desperate enough to accept a job that they knew was considered lower than prostitution and barely above selling crack to children. If it weren’t for the ironic fact that prostitutes are far more likely to be murdered by clients than telemarketers, I’m sure many people would actually prefer to follow that career path. I’m not so sure about that. I know some people who have been telemarketers part-time when all they wanted was a little extra spending money in college; they took the telemarketing job because it paid more than flipping burgers and such. After two of them realized how much the profession was despised, they quit (one still does it, and he actually likes the abuse… but he’s a strange cat :)). In any case, I regard it as my duty to make sure that telemarketers know they aren’t welcomed, because some of them might not know just how much people dislike them. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_H](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/85e7bf/32.png) [@Sam\_H](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_H)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2004, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telemarketers-deserve-death/151687/107 "2004-03-09T03:47:10Z")
My phone is in one room and I am usually in another. If you’re going to drag me there you’d better have a darned good reason other than trying to sell me a product I don’t want or need. I see telemarketers as no different from someone who accosts you on the street without provocation. The very act of telemarketing is rude and deserves to be treated with the same contempt as any other rude act. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2004, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telemarketers-deserve-death/151687/108 "2004-03-09T03:58:39Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > You know, these are human beings you’re talking about. I can understand being angry about the invasion of your privacy and the waste of your time, I can even understand losing your temper after one too many unwanted calls, but I can’t understand actually taking _pleasure_ in verbally abusing someone who probably has a miserable life already. Have you tried it? It’s more fun than you’d think. Honestly, though, I very rarely cursed out telemarketers, back when I used to get a lot of telemarketing calls. Usually, I’d just hang up on them as soon as I realized they were salesmen. There were a couple exceptions, such as the guy who re-dialed my number to call me a “douche,” but for the most part, it wasn’t worth the effort. I do, however, appreciate the efforts of those who do go out of their way to give telemarketers as much shit as possible. Much the same way I support our troops in Iraq, except I have marginally more respect for Saddam Hussein than I do for telemarketers. > [@](#): > > It’s not like telemarketers are bored pranksters who are calling you up for kicks. The person on the other end of the line was desperate enough to accept a job that they knew was considered lower than prostitution and barely above selling crack to children. If it weren’t for the ironic fact that prostitutes are far more likely to be murdered by clients than telemarketers, I’m sure many people would actually prefer to follow that career path. This is precisely why I support de-criminalizing prostitution: to end the scourge of telemarketing in our life time. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2004, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telemarketers-deserve-death/151687/109 "2004-03-09T07:52:33Z")
> [@Mr. Blue Sky](#): > > And they knew that verbal abuse was part of the job. Just because abuse is expected doesn’t mean it’s justified. I’m sure prostitutes know that being beaten by their pimps and possibly murdered by johns is part of the job too, but that doesn’t make beating and murdering hookers _right_. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2004, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telemarketers-deserve-death/151687/110 "2004-03-09T12:40:51Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > Just because abuse is expected doesn’t mean it’s justified. I’m sure prostitutes know that being beaten by their pimps and possibly murdered by johns is part of the job too, but that doesn’t make beating and murdering hookers _right_. Uh, lemme, what’s the word? Oh yeah, boo-hoo. ---
**Author:** ![lezlers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/258eb7/32.png) [@lezlers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lezlers)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2004, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telemarketers-deserve-death/151687/111 "2004-03-09T21:13:24Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > Just because abuse is expected doesn’t mean it’s justified. I’m sure prostitutes know that being beaten by their pimps and possibly murdered by johns is part of the job too, but that doesn’t make beating and murdering hookers _right_. This has got to be the most ridiculous comparison I’ve ever seen on the boards. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![BubbaDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bubbadog/32/333_2.png) [@BubbaDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BubbaDog)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2004, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telemarketers-deserve-death/151687/112 "2004-03-10T02:11:29Z")
If only I could somehow automatically route all my incoming telemarketer calls to **Lamia’s** phone. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2004, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telemarketers-deserve-death/151687/113 "2004-03-10T06:26:15Z")
> [@BubbaDog](#): > > If only I could somehow automatically route all my incoming telemarketer calls to **Lamia’s** phone. 😛 You do that. I’ll just hang up on them, the same way you could. I don’t need to take out my frustrations on people who are unfortunate enough to hold loathsome jobs. Being a telemarketer is its own punishment. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2004, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telemarketers-deserve-death/151687/114 "2004-03-10T06:31:15Z")
> [@lezlers](#): > > This has got to be the most ridiculous comparison I’ve ever seen on the boards. I’m not the first one here to compare telemarketers to criminals, although I may be the first one to suggest that they deserve the same sympathy we afford even to criminals. ---
**Author:** ![Windwalker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/5e9695/32.png) [@Windwalker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Windwalker)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2004, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telemarketers-deserve-death/151687/115 "2004-03-10T06:44:05Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > You do that. I’ll just hang up on them, the same way you could. I don’t need to take out my frustrations on people who are unfortunate enough to hold loathsome jobs. Being a telemarketer is its own punishment. But the difference here is that we want the field of telemarketing to become extinct because it is detriment to society; one way to help this along is to discourage people from joining the field, which may seem attractive because it tends to pay more than other crappy jobs (I knew someone who made $13/hour telemarketing). So this means trying to screw with or waste the time of telemarketers when they call you. Other loathsome jobs provide some benefit to society; being a janitor or garbageman or dishwasher may suck, but these jobs help society and deserve our respect. Even prostitutes provide entertainment. But the field of telemarketing is just a pure drain, and I will do what little I can to encourage its destruction. So you see, my goal in trying to get telephone sales reps to quit is nothing personal; I just want them to get a job that does not pollute society and my life in particular with no benefit. If everyone used elaborate tactics to try to waste telemarketers’ time (such as pretending to be interested and taking long pauses as you surf the internet), then it would probably become unprofitable for most companies to engage in, and we would see the decline of the industry. That is a worthy goal. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2004, 7:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telemarketers-deserve-death/151687/116 "2004-03-10T07:38:33Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > I’m not the first one here to compare telemarketers to criminals, although I may be the first one to suggest that they deserve the same sympathy we afford even to criminals. Nope. **Fenris** beat you to it: > [@Fenris](#): > > I’ve actually made telespammers cry. I take some pride in that. They’re deserving of the same “courtesy” that any thief\* deserves. Would you advocate being civil to a purse-snatcher? Or a burglar? Really, **Lamia** , what on Earth made you think I, or anyone else, would balk at using strong language against criminals? I wouldn’t normally do this, but I think I speak for just about everyone on my side of the debate when I say, “Fuck criminals too.” ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2004, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telemarketers-deserve-death/151687/117 "2004-03-10T09:05:46Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > You do that. I’ll just hang up on them, the same way you could. I don’t need to take out my frustrations on people who are unfortunate enough to hold loathsome jobs. Being a telemarketer is its own punishment. See, I don’t want them calling me, period. My husband and I sleep during the day, but my husband’s job requires him to be reachable by phone when he’s not on vacation or not on his days off. He has been on assignment in Oklahoma City (about a 5 hour drive from here, I don’t know how far it is in miles) and his boss has called him in to fix something that nobody else knows how to deal with. He got lots of brownie points and paid time off for THAT job, let me tell you. In any case, my real point is that once that phone rings, it wakes us up, and then we have a hard time going back to sleep. And it WILL ring when we’re asleep. Even if we hang up on the telemarketers, they’ll call again, and again, and again. Now, if one of my family calls, fine, I’ll go ahead and try to wake up and take the call. If someone from my husband’s shop calls, well, that’s part of his job. But if someone disturbs my sleep for his own benefit, he WILL hear how angry I am about it. Telemarketing (and its sisters, charity and political spamming by phone) is rude by nature. It involves calling up people who probably don’t want to answer the phone, especially not right THEN, and quite probably interrupting a nap, or a lovemaking session, or just a really good game that the player can’t put on “pause”. Telemarketing will pay pretty good, but that’s because the companies who hire telemarketers expect their spammers to accept some abuse as part of the job. Any telemarketer who expects courtesy when they are rude initially should have their nose rubbed in their mistake. And I intend to do so, every chance I get. I used to feel that telemarketers deserved courtesty, too. Then I was one for a couple of months, for a couple of different companies. I’ve learned that it’s a sleazy business, and I will discourage its workers whenever I can. I want to make it unprofitable for those companies to market in this way. Telemarketing, like email spam, bases its business practices on cost shifting. Telemarketers do not subsidize my phone costs, like junk mail does for snail mail. Telemarketers do not give me something of value for listening to their pitches, like TV ads do for the shows I want to watch. Telemarketers use MY resources to market to me, like spam email does. In other words, I pay for them to use my property to market to me, without gaining any benefit. They also demand my immediate attention, because it might be a call from my husband’s job or from my family. Calls from my family or from my husband’s job will show up on Caller ID as “out of area”, by the way. Now, if some telemarketing company would come up with a plan where they’d pay me to listen to a few minutes of commercials, at a time of my choosing, I might be willing to listen. But telemarketing imposes a cost to me in time, energy, and money without compensating me in the slightest. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2004, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telemarketers-deserve-death/151687/118 "2004-03-10T13:33:32Z")
> [@Windwalker](#): > > But the difference here is that we want the field of telemarketing to become extinct because it is detriment to society; one way to help this along is to discourage people from joining the field, which may seem attractive because it tends to pay more than other crappy jobs (I knew someone who made $13/hour telemarketing). So this means trying to screw with or waste the time of telemarketers when they call you. I don’t know if it’s realistically possible to make a job so unpleasant that people will no longer be willing to take it. Everyone needs money, and telemarketing is unskilled indoor work with no heavy lifting. Even if it paid minimum wage people would do it if they couldn’t find anything better. After all, people who work in the fast food industry are regularly treated horribly by customers _and_ they have to do real physical work in hot kitchens, yet McDonald’s and the rest still manage to find plenty of employees. I completely support trying to drive telemarketing firms out of business by 1) refusing to buy from them and 2) encouraging laws to restrict or outright ban them, but shouting at the poor schlub on the other end of the line is not going to destroy the Evil Empire. > [@Lynn Bodoni](#): > > See, I don’t want them calling me, period. My husband and I sleep during the day, but my husband’s job requires him to be reachable by phone when he’s not on vacation or not on his days off. He has been on assignment in Oklahoma City (about a 5 hour drive from here, I don’t know how far it is in miles) and his boss has called him in to fix something that nobody else knows how to deal with. He got lots of brownie points and paid time off for THAT job, let me tell you. In any case, my real point is that once that phone rings, it wakes us up, and then we have a hard time going back to sleep. And it WILL ring when we’re asleep. Even if we hang up on the telemarketers, they’ll call again, and again, and again. Now, if one of my family calls, fine, I’ll go ahead and try to wake up and take the call. If someone from my husband’s shop calls, well, that’s part of his job. But if someone disturbs my sleep for his own benefit, he WILL hear how angry I am about it. Let me be clear – I do not for one moment fault anyone for being upset at telemarketing or even for losing their temper over the phone. It’s the idea that they are somehow “fighting the good fight” just by being nasty to people who have a really sucky job that troubles me. The idea that people who accept such work are subhuman and deserve the worst that can be dished out to them that troubles me too. The telemarketing industry is corrupt and engages in obnoxious and unethical practices, but the people actually making the calls should only share a very small part of the blame for this. They’re mostly just people who needed to earn some money and took the best legal job they could find. Very few of them actually _want_ to bother you. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2004, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telemarketers-deserve-death/151687/119 "2004-03-11T22:27:31Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > They’re mostly just people who needed to earn some money and took the best legal job they could find. Very few of them actually _want_ to bother you. Key phrase? “…the **best** legal job” Every single telemarketer is someone who decided that bothering someone, being rude and stealing (to a minor degree) was a “better” job than doing honest work like bussing tables. working at McDonalds or the aforementioned selling crack to schoolkids. (At least the schoolkids get something in return for the money they have to shell out) No one was ever _forced_ to be a telespammer. If the local economy is good enough to support a telespam center, it’s certainly good enough to have some fast food, convienience store jobs that need filling or crackhead schoolkids looking for a fix. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2004, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telemarketers-deserve-death/151687/120 "2004-03-12T01:44:03Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > Key phrase? “…the **best** legal job” > > Every single telemarketer is someone who decided that bothering someone, being rude and stealing (to a minor degree) was a “better” job than doing honest work like bussing tables. working at McDonalds or the aforementioned selling crack to schoolkids. (At least the schoolkids get something in return for the money they have to shell out) > > No one was ever _forced_ to be a telespammer. If the local economy is good enough to support a telespam center, it’s certainly good enough to have some fast food, convienience store jobs that need filling or crackhead schoolkids looking for a fix. Are you sure about that? I was once forced to choose between telemarketing work and…nothing. If there were other jobs available locally at the time I sure couldn’t get them, and I had applied for things as lowly as floor-sweeper at a movie theater. (I was probably over-qualified, or at least over-aged. Employers tend to favor high-school kids for low-level cleaning and fast food work.) I had also applied for a variety of office jobs, and one place I’d sent my resume to called me up to say that although the position I’d applied for had been filled they did have call work available. They tried to make it sound like it wasn’t really telemarketing, but it was. I’d have been calling up credit card holders and trying to convince them to sign up for a new card. I decided that I wasn’t yet desperate enough to do telemarketing and told them no. Earlier that year I had accepted a temporary job conducting medical surveys by phone, arguably a job not much better than telemarketing, but I had to draw the line somewhere. However, I also had the resources to hold out for something better and eventually found a receptionist gig. Temporary lack of work wasn’t going to land me on the street. Not everyone is that fortunate. Of course, there is always work available in the thriving crack industry, and it probably pays better than telemarketing. But believe it or not, there are some people who actually consider such work morally inferior to telemarketing. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telemarketers-deserve-death/151687.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telemarketers-deserve-death/151687.md?page=7)