You Badly Need to Work : Telemarketing?

In My Humble Opinion
1

If this has been discussed already, then either ignore or close the thread, especially if it might start a flame-war, but I don’t think I’m generalizing when I write that the majority of us hate being called by someone trying to sell us something. Right? Is that still the case?

I ask because I have been reading that folks are looking for any kind of work these days, including telemarketing.

Oh-oh!

Now what?

The shoe’s on the other foot now, huh?

Please, please, please do not take offense, okay, but I have to ask if anyone who heretofore “put down” (and don’t tell me we all haven’t done it, because I can cite, cite, cite, right here if I need to) these folks, and are now having to do this to feed their families, feel like whores?

Before you come down on me, let me just say to you that because I can no longer work as a respiratory therapist, I have applied for a job as a “bag boy” at a grocery store near where we live, so I am not being sanctimonious, okay?

However…

Do you think that those very folks who hated being called and asked to buy something. might be the best people for this job just because they understand?

Being the kind of person I am, my “spiel” might sound something like this:

“Hello, Ma’am/Sir? First of all, I am sooooo sorry to bother you, but could I get you to listen to me for just a minute and just see if you might be interested in this product? I know you must hate being called by a tele-marketer like me, but I’m just trying to make a liv…”

And at that point I’m being yanked out of my chair and fired.

Next stop: Mc Donald’s.

Just think: As little as 5 years ago, (in my case, 1) you wouldn’t have ever seen a
post like this.

Sucks, don’t it?

So would you consider it?

Thanks

Q

2

Personality -wise, I’m totally unsuited to that kind of work. I even hate making phone calls to companies to resolve problems or whatever.

I would only consider it if the calling was to current customers such as customer service follow-ups, expiring warranties(real ones) or memberships- that sort of thing. NO cold calls to random or sequential dialed numbers.

3

There is absolutely nothing wrong with working at McDonalds. It’s a job, it pays reasonably well (at least it does here), and it doesn’t involve ringing people to annoy them and sell them things they don’t want.

4

It appears I am guilty of (what?) “profiling” an employer.

I DO apologize, Martini Enfield, and will do my best not to repeat my mistake.

I also apologize to any of our members who work at McDonald’s. That was very cold of me.

Consider what I wrote the ravings of a bitter old man.:frowning:

I just miss taking care of my patients.

Agan, please forgive me.

Thanks

Bill

5

No need to apologise, Quasimodem. We’ve all been there!

The point I was making was that given a choice between working as a telemarketer and working at Maccas, I’d take Maccas again any day of the week. The people were good to work with, the pay was good, the conditions were good, and the organisational and teamwork skills I can put on my resume from working there have been very useful over the years.

No-one wants to work in a job “below their station”, so to speak, but telemarketing is soul destroying work that involves annoying people all day and getting sworn at. Working in McDonalds involves giving food to people (and everyone likes getting food!) and whilst you’ll reek of vegetable oil at the end of each shift, you’ll know you haven’t interrupted anyone’s meal, you won’t get sworn at as much, and if you’re lucky, the people you work with will be awesome and you can go out for drinks together on the weekend.

Believe me, everyone understands if you have to work at Maccas or KFC or somewhere like that for a bit. There’s no shame in it.

I wasn’t intending to lecture you, so do please accept my apologies if it came across that way. :slight_smile:

6

Well, in telemarketing, I hear the money’s awsome.

7

I am a telemerketer. I really don’t mind the job at all.

8

I once had a job that involved calling people for a charity. It wasn’t so bad because first of all, it was for a good cause; second, it was one I believed in; third, I never, ever had to lie to people. I did occasionally get people who thought I was bothering them. No problem, I took them off my list. (Although some of them didn’t want to get taken off the list, they just wanted to let me know that at that moment I was bothering them.)

I have friends who gravitate toward sales, and they don’t necessarily always believe in what they’re selling. This doesn’t bother them. It would bother me, and I couldn’t do it.

I could only do telemarketing if I really, truly believed I was offering people an awesome opportunity. I can’t think of anything that would qualify. Besides, I would probably get fired really quickly, so there has to be something else I could do.

9

I’d rather move in with my mother-in-law.

10

Well, Martini Enfield (one of my favorite drinks, and my Dad’s favorite rifle;)),
sometimes people need to “re-think” stuff, and if there weren’t someone there to provide the “Hey, think about what you just said…” where would we be?

I cite as an example, Glenn Beck of Fox.

So you know what?

If you want to call it “lecturing”, that’s fine, but I prefer guiding. :slight_smile:

And let’s take it a step further…

What if you hadn’t said something?

Dude!:eek:

Your ol’ Uncle Quas’ would have had hell to pay! :wink:

So it’s a good thing we caught it early, ain’t it?:slight_smile:

You not only pointed out my gaffe, you actually changed my way of thinking, and THAT is quite a feat! :slight_smile:

I can usually be counted on to say some outrageous shit, but it is NEVER my intention to hurt, and if you had let that go?:smack::smack::smack:

People would have been hurt, so don’t EVER apologize for setting someone straight.

Thanks,

Quasi

11

I think most people have been in a situation at some point- perhaps when they were just out of high school, or studying at University, or any one of a number of other situations- where their options are basically “Take a bottom-rung customer service job or starve to death under a railway bridge”.

Getting a job as a supermarket nightfiller is something I highly recommend- good pay, no stress, you can put an MP3 player on and listen to music or the radio, no customers to deal with, and you spend your coffee and meal breaks kicking back and taking it easy because there’s nothing that needs doing so urgently it can’t wait until after smoko/dinnertime.

Actually, supermarkets in general are good places to work, IMHO. You can have a good time joking around with your colleagues (when you’re not doing work), the customers are usually happy (especially if you can help them find something obscure or unusual) and there are (again, IME) lots of “mature-age” people working there for whatever reason (often married women whose kids are at school and their husband is at work during the day, so they work to get some shopping money and a discount on the groceries).

I can tell you from experience that it’s terrible and emasculating to have to go from having a “decent” job to stacking boxes on shelves or something equally menial. I’ve been there. It sucks harder than a Dyson with a turbocharger and a nitrous booster. But it’s a job, it brings in money, and once you get back on your feet you can quietly expunge it from your resume and then pretend it never happened. But while you’re there, you’ve got an income, and you’d be surprised how many other people are there for exactly the same reasons you are. :slight_smile:

12

Telemarketing jobs will usually have their own script, so your spiel wouldn’t work. It can be a decent paying job, though usually parttime. I was in telemarketing for a year and half or so and generally made around 15 an hour. Several people in my office regularly made over 20.

A job is a job.

13

I did some telefundraising and telemarketing several years ago. I actually look back at that time in my life with genuine fondness. Of course, the important things to remember are:

  1. One place that I worked at handled pitches for organizations like the Sierra Club, the World Wildlife Fund, public television, etc. The other was a ballet. I may not have hugged any trees lately, and I personally have no use for ballet, but at least nothing that I called on behalf of made me feel dirty.

  2. I only did it for about nine months. Had I done it for a few years, I think it might have ground me down.

14

That would pretty much cause it to implode on itself, wouldn’t it?:slight_smile:

But back to the subject: Would you do it and would you think you’d sold out your principles, or would you just say, “Fuckit! A guy’s gotta eat!”?

I mean, a LOT of us went through the trouble to list our phone numbers on the “Don’t Call” (what a joke) list. So I guess now, if we’re telemarketing, we can’t even call our wives/SO’s to bring us lunch? :smiley:

I really like that word you used: emasculate! :slight_smile:

It made me wanna grab my ball! :smiley:

How old are you, anyway, ME, because you sound wise beyond your years.

(Unless you’re older than me, of course):slight_smile:

It was great to have interacted with you.

Quasi

15

I doesn’t apply to charities, non-profit groups, political calls, surveys, and business to business calls, which are the only type of outbound calls I do at work. Most of the people I call have no idea of this loophole when they tell me “I’m on the do not call list”.

16

When I was in college, I spent a summer working as a telemarketer for a business school. The department store I’d worked for before didn’t have work for me at the beginning of my break, and I needed the money, so I did it.

I’m not particularly ashamed of it, and I’d do it again if I had to. I also worked at a McDonalds for a few months after I graduated from college, and and I can’t say being a telemarketer was worse than that, but I worked alone with little or no supervision, and I was paid by the hour rather than the sale. At the risk of sounding mercenary, when times are hard you do what you have to do to get by. I’m very fond of my morals and standards, but I can’t eat them or pay the rent with them alone.

17

When I was nineteen I took a job as a telemarketer. We made cold calls for time share condos. I thought it would be a cushy job, could sit on my ass all day and went for it. I got two bucks and change an hour so what did I care?

Well, hardly anyone bit on this amazing deal, and I was told to be more forceful, make them want to buy. Uh, whaa? I can’t make people buy shit. Boss told me I better shape up or… nuff said, I was outta there. The fried chicken place didn’t seem so bad after that. I still got yelled at, but I could control what I was doing.

18

Would you consider business-to-business cold calling (selling software and the like) to be “telemarketing”? I had to do that for a while, and didn’t mind it except for relatively low pay and a lot of pressure to make a minimum number of calls. Very few people swearing at me.

19

I wouldn’t, but that’s just me. It’s calling at a time when people are working and have to answer the phone anyway, and if you’re offering a money-saving service you believe in (or your boss believes in) then if I were your prospect, I’d be willing to listen.

Q

20

No, because the “best way to do it” is to not do it.

Never. The only way I’d ever enter marketing at all is if I was a “true believer” in the product I was selling, or people were seeking my advice.