If you’re so sure of that, set up a poll. This is the forum for that.
I suggest the following:
What do you do when a telemarketer calls?
Listen to the pitch and decide if you want to buy something
Say no and hang up
Just hang up
Act rude and hang up
Bad example - a grownup would find water and help the burning loser.
No. Some of them would probably give you a pounding if they were capable. So their triggers are just a little bit tighter than others.
In this example I AM BETTER than you. YOU initiated the confrontation. There is still a little bit of room to declare moral superiority on the low road when dealing with somebody from a lower road.
I’ll agree that its a legal job. It’s Legitimacy is questionable.
Oh, it’s very relevant. I want you to fart and then sell air fresheners to your audience. It’s a tough sell but you might get a sale on 1 out of every 50 people (most likely better odds than telemarketing). Who cares if you piss off the other 49 if the overall method is profitable? Ta-dah! You are a successful Flatumarketer!
It could be said that one sign of maturity and therefore adulthood is to realize that if you do something that pisses people off, you should quit doing it. Being treated with respect for pissing people off makes absolutely no sense.
We’re adults and should logically take steps to discourage annoying people from continuing to annoy others.
The Blues Clues target audience would be smart enough to know not to do the bad thing in the first place, or they’re gonna get yelled at.
Telemarketers and their supporters have to realize that the vast majority of people do not want to be called, that when they call they’re not the only one who disturbed this person, and that often, their brethren who called before them were lying thieves who would scam an old widow out of her last 10 bucks. If you choose to join this group, you should expect the occasional rude rebuttal, and not assume that the general rules of phone etiquette apply.
It is a shitty job, and I have no intention to make it a pleasant one.
I understand your frustration. I just don’t think it’s ever acceptable to behave in that fashion. I’m not going to convince you guys of that, and you guys aren’t going to convince me it’s okay. We’re at an impasse, and I’m done. No skin off my butt, since I’m not a telemarketer. I just wish people all around were nicer.
Honest to God… I never realized there were this many rude, obnoxious people on the Dope.
I no longer work as a telemarketer. It was never my life long asperation to become a telemarketer. But let me tell y’all something… when push comes to shove and you are trying desperately to keep from losing your home and everything that you love… you swallow your pride and do whatever you fucking have to do. I am not defending the business. I hated every single fucking day. But I needed a job, I have several damaged vertebra making it impossible to stand or walk for any length of time (not just temporarily bedridden) and I was woman enough to swallow my pride and do an HONEST job that I knew would earn me nothing but hatred.
I have always done my best here at SDMB to treat everyone with respect and try to be helpful, but this thread is very eye-opening. It would seem that common courtesy is not so common these days.
It makes me extremely happy that I do not have children to worry about growing up in this ugly ugly world.
People should be nicer, but the part that you refuse to grasp is that it starts by not rudely disturbing people in their homes, trying to con them out of their money, ignoring do not call lists, not listening when the person says they’re not interested, calling back multiple times, etc. etc. They are the ones who invade my home with their jerkish behavior.
See, most of the telemarketers that call me are not doing HONEST work. They are thieves. Understand that. If you happen to be the next one that calls and are “honest” and following the do not call lists, well you will get lumped in with all the other unsolicited calls that are disturbing me. I have no interest or method to tell the unsolicited calls apart.
I’m glad that you are happy that your non-existent children don’t have to witness the horrors of war, starvation, disease, racism, and some goof on a message board being rude to a telemarketer. That’s not hyperbole at all!
Common courtesy is lacking these days. The problem is, you expect one group to be courteous to a group that is knowingly and willingly being uncourteous for profit. Target the right group.
I am targeting the right group- the people who are too self cenhtered and rude to think that the big bad telemarketers are singling them out exclusively. I was damned good at my job when I did it. When I worked for a ‘charitable’ organization, it was a horrid time in my life and I despised the work I was doing, but I did what I had to do to survive. My second telemarketing job was not what you typically think of, working for a financial institute, calling customers to see if they had any further need for money. Guess what? Quite often, I was WELCOMED. Some people were glad to hear that my company was pleased with the way they handled their accounts, and we were able to help out with a little extra cash. One older gentleman cried when I called- his brother had just passed away and he had no money for the funeral. I helped him with a loan application and hung up feeling damned good about that call.
Don’t paint everyone with the same brush. We are not automatically evil people because we hold a job you don’t approve of. I can hold my head up and feel no shame for doing what I had to do. Those who take such pride in being assholes have to look at themselves in the mirror every morning.
I am done with this argument. I know I have nothing to be ashamed of for chosing to work rather than park my ass on welfare.
I could give a rat’s ass if they are singling me out or calling everyone on the planet. Anyone who calls my house unsolicited will be painted with the same brush. What part aren’t you clear about? If you don’t like the way I act on the phone, don’t call me! For some reason, the part about you being rude, intrusive, uncourteous and self-centered about making the call in the first place is lost on you. The person who makes these unwanted calls is the “asshole”, not the person answering. That’s some major league denial and blame shifting.
You put ‘charitable’ in quotes regarding one of your jobs. Are you implying what you did there was illegal or of questionable practice? I guess taking advantage of innocent people is nothing to be ashamed of, just so you are getting money (if that’s not what you meant by the quotes, then never mind). It’s interesting how a man’s brother died, and you “helped” him by interrupting his grieving with an unsolicited telemarketing call to talk him into a loan at a very inappropriate time (he could have called his bank at anytime you know).
I’m glad you’re done arguing on behalf of telemarketers…you weren’t doing too good of a job.
If people want to politely hang up on these people, that’s fine. I have just gotten tired of someone using my phone to try and steal money from me, be it through credit card scams, ‘charitable’ organizations, or loan scams.
I didn’t see a need for a poll. The thread as it is seems clear enough. One person after another, with varying degrees of hostility toward the profession, nonetheless manages to avoid going out of his or her way to be nasty or take revenge. What do these people know that you don’t?
No one’s stopping you if you want to set up that poll yourself.
That wasn’t an example, sport. It’s just an old saying. It wasn’t meant to be taken literally.
Which was kind of my point.
Welcome to the low road! All of the fun people are here.
Telemarketers are rude by very nature of their job, and they should not be surprised when they are met with rudeness when they wake up the colicky baby, or they won’t get off the phone even when someone’s waiting for a call about how Grandpa did or didn’t make it out of surgery.
I’ve already said “No thanks” to telemarketing calls, but this does not stop some companies. They think that the DNC list doesn’t apply to them, or that if it’s legal to call because of a pre-existing relationship, that I will welcome that call. Yes, it does, and no, I won’t. Any business that disregards my wishes in this matter gets ONE chance to never telemarket me again…and I’m seriously thinking about not even allowing that one chance.
Telemarketers and the companies they work for know, or should know, that they are going to inconvenience people for no good reason. Snail mail junk mail subsidizes regular personal mail. Ads on TV and radio and internet websites pay for the shows or content. Telemarketing provides NO benefit to almost all of the people who receive it. There might be a very few people who welcome the calls, but for the most part, these are extremely lonely people who need more contact with the outside world.
If telemarketers had to subsidize phone bills, do you think that they’d stay in business? That’s the only way that I can see them benefiting the majority of people that they call.
It’s MY phone, it’s MY time, and nobody else has the right to say how I should use my time and my phone, or how I should prioritize their use. I’m willing to be woken up from a sound sleep to learn that my parents were in an accident. Not happy about it, but I do want to learn such things. I am NOT willing to be woken up to listen to some loser trying to get me to have my carpets cleaned, or trying to get me to sign up for card services.
I have found that simply telling telemarketers that they have called a home office results in them apologising and then getting off the line at high speed. I don’t actually know why it works, but it does (at least here in Australia).
i’ve always tried to have a bit of fun. depending on the product being sold, i’ll ask absurd questions to get a ludicrously bogus reply.
try to extend my cars warranty? i drive a 1979 subaru brat gl wagon.
sell me cheap health insurance? ive got a rediculously bad pre-existing condition ( they still said i could get a cheap policy, with a tumor the size of a tennis ball on my testicles. i laughed for weeks)
sell me magazines for your charity? i ask for “hardcore” porn ( i do believe last time it was “creamed corn beauties” and “goats in panties”)
vacation package? Taiwan sex tourism all the way!
needless to say, i don’t get too many calls anymore… i miss them so…
I bought a cheap modem, ran a line through it, and now when a telemarketer (or politician) calls a program picks up the line and runs the standard “this line is no longer in service, please hang up and try again” message. The program used to drop the call right away, but I’ve found the no service message to be more effective.
Papsett, I was unaware that all telemarketers had to “sit on their arse annoying people all day” because they were disabled, and I apologise for my insensitivity.
Still, I’d suggest if you want to engender a little more respect for yourselves, you change your job to online tarot card reading, or something similar and equally less bothersome to the general public who are unfortunate enough to still have a land line phone and no answering machine.
We just got caller ID turned on so we can just ignore the calls from unknown callers. Almost all of the time when we get one of these, it ends up as dead air on the answering machine.
For some reason, we get a lot of dead air calls from Illinois.
Since I’ve been on both sides (I’ve been rude to telemarketers and I’ve been treated like dirt by people I called while I was a telemarketer), the one thing I can say with assurance is that it sure is easy to be mean to someone anonymously. Something you’d never think of saying to someone’s face becomes perfectly reasonable when you’re talking anonymously to a stranger (kinda like these message boards, eh?).
It is easy to be arrogant anonymously, but I don’t think my restraint would last as long face to face either… If someone on the street kept insistently bugging me trying to sell me something I didn’t want after I told them ‘no thanks’ they are going to cop a serve from me as well.
I would be unable to politely and continuously say ‘no thanks’ whilst being hounded when I’m going about my business, there is a cut-off point.
Telemarketing employees are more guilty of abusing anonymity than anyone. Most of the stuff telemarketers sell is grossly overpriced junk, the investments mostly worthless, and with charitable organizations, very little of the money goes for direct charitable purposes. On top of that, telemarketers often attempt to target the elderly.
So knowing it’s mostly a scam, could you in-person solicit money from a elderly person on a minimal fixed income? There are a few people that can, but I doubt most people employed by telemarketers could. So the telemarketing employees are abusing the anonymity of the phone more than anyone.
I have no sympathy for telemarketing employees, but I’m not rude to them. I’m not rude because I don’t want to waste my time being rude. I simply say something like “please put me on your do-not-call list for this company and any other companies that you solicit for.” I do that because it’s the only potentially legally effective means of stopping them from calling back (although some do anyway.) Then I go back to living my life as quickly as possible.