No, I’m saying that telemarketing is a job that by definition includes harassing people. I don’t know if I have personally received a telemarketing call from Snoooopy, nor do I really care. (Unlikely anyway, since I have only a cellphone these days.)
Well, yes. It’s telemarketing. Is anyone not aware of how much telemarketers are hated? A telemarketer complaining about hostility is like a sewer worker complaining about the smell. She knew it stunk before she went in there.
Yeah, and the person who cuts in front of you in a grocery store line does too. And the driver of a scheduled bus that two minutes late. And if your child/spouse/friend is taking a long time to get ready to leave the house when you’ve already gotten ready.
Now the dubious business practices I take issue with. But it really doesn’t take much of my time to tell someone, “Sorry, I’m not interested,” and hang up. I’ll talk OVER them if I have to do so. But I am not going to start screaming and calling them horrible names, just as I would not scream and curse at the people mentioned above. I may ask them to change their behaviors politely, but I would try my best not to let it degrade into a fiery, shameful display of temper.
What’s wrong with courtesy and treating human beings like human beings?
Saying telemarkers deserve death was my attempt at humor. Hey, it’s the Pit. GAFL.
And while I am sure your sister put up with lots of abuse, she also got paid more if she had spent the summer flipping burgers and asking if you would like fries with that, and can I supersize that for you? If you can’t stand the heat, go back to the kitchen, as it were.
My phone is mine. It is for my convenience, not the telemarketers. I detest interruptions and invasions of MY privacy, in my home.
Nocturne, yes, the lady cutting in front of me in the check out line is annoying - but I am in public. We put up with that in public. Not at home. Yes, my child/spouse/friend taking a long time to get ready is annoying. But because they are my child/spouse/friend, I am willing to allow for more, because of what I get in return for having them around me. Friends call each other up because we know that the friendship outweighs the ‘invasion of privacy’.
But I don’t have many friends who would call me between 6 and 8pm.
GAFL?
I need an acrospansion, please.
(That’s a neologism for acronym-expansion.)
I’m so hip.
Dragon, the point was SHE COULD NOT GET A JOB that would sufficiently pay her bills elsewhere in the teeny tiny town she was living in.
I suppose it means “Get A Fucking Life”
I usually just hang up as soon as they ask me how I’m doing. I don’t bother with abuse, but i don’t feel sorry for them if they are abused. Nobody forced them to take the job, and I really don’t care how much they really need money for college. That’s not my problem. There are more honerable ways to make money, you know, like stripping or selling crank.
I use a program that has a script for me to read, that includes little windows with the applicable laws. I get their name, company, company address, phone number, get them to put me on their do-not-call list and have them send me a written copy of their do-not-call policy. It then keeps a log of this.
I’m extremely polite about the whole process, however.
Hey, she could have done what I did - I worked two jobs in the summer, and one job during the year - working nights, Thursday Friday and Saturdays. I missed out on a lot of great parties, but I made some good friends, didn’t get busted when the cops showed up one night, and I put myself through school.
Not saying that your sister took the ‘easy’ way out. But I am saying that she can’t complain about what a crappy job it is if she took it for the money. I personally am very polite to telemarketers the first time, and I agree, it probably sucks being abused on the phone. But, hey, that’s life.
Hey, jarbabyj, I’m not dissing your sister as a person. I have a sister, and I would be seriously ticked if someone dissed her. I am saying that she can’t have it both ways. Either she understands that the decent money means she has to put up with some crap, or she gives up the decent money and does something else.
Because my sister tried to do the same thing. She dealt blackjack out at one of the casinos in Minnesota to put herself through college. Money was good. After a couple of months, she hated it. Absolutely hated it. When asked why she didn’t just quit, it was always ‘because the money’s so good’. Fine, than stop bitching about what a crummy job it is.
She shut up about what a crappy job it was, and a few months later she quit and got a different job that doesn’t pay as much, but she likes it a lot more, so she enjoys working - guess what? She works more, has more fun, and still makes about what she made at the casino.
Dragon: Not necessarily. I worked a telemarketing job for a few weeks in 1990. Do you remember 1990? Do you have any idea how hard it was for an 18 year old with no job experience to get ANY job in 1990?
Yeah, but do you get this worked up about junk mail, spam, or tv commercials? 
With any luck, spam.
I respect telemarketers more than I do spammers, child pornographers, and tabloid writers, but less so than I do prostitutes and drug dealers.
In fact, if I were hard up for money and the legality and safety were not an issue, I would much rather engage in prostitution or drug dealing than telemarketing. (Not that I would. It’s illegal.)
Considering I am a confirmed heterosexual male, and that probably over 95% of male prostitute’s clients are also male, that should tell you something about how much I loathe the concept of telemarketing.
But do telemarketers deserve to die? Naw. Heck, if it were up to me AND the FACTS of the issue are not in dispute, I would only implement the death penalty for spammers, thieves, murderers, and rapists. (that said, I dont beleive in the death penalty because we can never be sure enough to enact the ultimate sanction.)
But if you ask me then if I would have the cajones to actually pull the trigger, no matter how mad I was at the person, I probably wouldnt. Not even a telemarketer if it was a capital offense.
Except people who spam me with offers of kiddie porn. I seriously would be able to kill them.
I had a good day on the phones yesterday – brought in over $600 in donations to the Sierra Club. I hope nobody gets resentful if my actions end up saving a few trees.
You know what’s wrong with telemarketers? They have no respect for people. It’s just plain rude to:
-Call and hang up when I answer the phone
-Refuse to take “no” for an answer
-Interrupt me when I try to speak
-Repeatedly call back and leave messages when it’s clear I’m not interested
-Use auto-dialing machines with recorded messages.
It’s just rude. I don’t care how much money you make; it’s still rude. I’m never rude to telmarketers; I just say “no thank you” and hang up. Nevertheless, I don’t get how a lot of telemarketers are expecting people to be polite to them. Please realize that you are disturbing people in their homes, and often using distasteful tactics as well. You really should be surprised if they aren’t annoyed. If you want to be treated with courtesy, GET ANOTHER JOB.
p.s. - Snooooopy, I’m not so much talking about you. I have more sympathy for those who are doing it for a nonprofit cause.
Oh, yeah, there’s a world of difference between asking for charitable donations and hawking forty-year light bulbs on the telephone. Although occasionally annoying* at least they 're doing something useful.
*I’ve been getting so many calls from the well-meaning folks at Calpirg that I’ve started telling them I don’t donate to enviromental charities since I found out the trees were out to get me.
tell them you can’t give out money because it is printed on trees so it is unethical!
[kambuckta opens can of worms] Blowero, maybe it’s just American telemarketers who are incredibly abrasive, because I have never (either in my role as a telefundraiser or as a phone-owner who gets telemarketing calls) encountered people who:
a) Hang up when the phone is answered*
b) Refuse to take ‘No’ for an answer**
c) Interrupt when the customer is trying to speak***
d) Leave messages on answering machines**** or
e)… We don’t use ‘auto-dialling’ or recorded messages here anyway (or at least if we do, I have never come across it). [/can of worms] 
- The telemarketer may have allowed the phone to ring x number of times and assumed you were not at home, and thus your picking up the phone coincided with he/she disconnecting the dial.
** As soon as somebody shows ANY disinterest in donating to the charity I work for, I thank them for their time and bid them a good day.
***The only time I will interrupt a customer is if they are violently frothing at the mouth (which is surprisingly rare believe it or not) and only to apologise for the intrusion and to tell them I will take their name off our list. Then I thank them again for hearing me out, and bid them a good day anyway.
****Leaving messages on A/M’s is absolutely pointless and we are not permitted to do it. Like, seriously, who in their right mind is going to return a call to a telemarketer???
I’m not saying that telemarketing is not annoying but the activities you mentioned are certainly not practiced by me, telemarketers I work with, or telemarketers I have had ringing me. Maybe it’s just in the US of A that t/m’s are so rabid??
Hey Snooooopy, good to hear you had a brilliant one! Mine have been a bit ordinary of late (after Xmas and with the costs of kids going back to school here). Here’s hoping that next week improves in the charity stakes, otherwise I might be out of a job!! (Orright you lot out there in SDMB land, stop clapping will ya.) 