Made a telemarketer curse and hang up on me

When I just hung up or asked for the no call list, it only made them call more. My fake sales waste of time as gotten them to finally stop calling. In fact, one of the groups that was calling me is so well known for being scam artists and lawbreakers that the AG in Florida is constantly chasing the scumbag owner and shutting him down.... then he just opens up again. Wasting their time is the only effective way to get rid of them.

 

No, it's OK because they're invading your privacy by trying to sell you something in your home and refusing to take no for an answer. I'm usually polite until the second time they won't let me say no. Then I hang up.

 

I did have an interesting experience in Cape Town few years ago. A new call center opened in this massive building. My mother-in-law won a competition to open a business inside it at the same time and opened a little convenience store next to the entrance of the building, so the workers stop in before and after their shifts. They also have a cart that goes around the floor with snacks and drinks. We spent a few days there and the workers were so happy to be working these telemarketing jobs. Must be the happiest telemarketers in the world. There is still extraordinary poverty in S.A. and these were pretty good jobs, especially for people who never had access to education. I did shudder a bit when I'd see big boards with goals for the day and some of the supervisors gave off the same type of vibe as my Beamer-driving boss, but the work setting was much different than the grim/chaotic/ridiculous place I was in.

 

Actually, there is a worse sales job than telemarketing: going door-to-door.

People still come through my neighborhood, and sometimes after dark. Some of them are legit and actually haul along vacuums, bug-killing chems, etc. to demonstrate for you. Others I believe are staking out homes for future burglaries.

Either way, they're annoying as hell ... and must be desperate for money, because in north Idaho, most people own firearms. And if you step foot on their property, you basically become a target.

Don't bring a carpet cleaner and a sales pitch to a gun fight.

 

I cold-called for Prudential-Bache in Newport Beach for a few weeks when I was 17 or 18. Friend and I had the entire floor to ourselves from 6:30 till about 9 o'clock. First few nights were OK, made hundreds of calls, got a few folks interested in investments and yadda yadda.

It became a drag fast so for the last few nights he and I had fun by calling numbers all over the world -- White House, Beijing, Kremlin, South Africa -- and patching the call through to the other person to see what their reaction would be.

Worked another cold-calling job a year later, but after a week I became more and more like Costanza in the clip I posted above. After 4 or 5 hours on my last night I stopped reading the script and began each call "Do you want to buy a computer or not?" or "Listen, if you buy a computer we'll send you on vacation -- do you want to go or not?"

Never cold-called again.

 

I did telemarketing for a time share resort and for a satelitte company when I was a teenager. Pretty sure I quit the satelitte company after a day or two. At the time share resort, I lasted for a few months and was actually good at it. Met a cute girl there than I became, uh, friendly with. Also met a guy who'd end up being the best boss I've ever had. He moved me up to the front and had me actually sellling the timeshares. I sucked at that, but it opened the door to another cute girl that I became, uh, friendly with.

So my experience with telemarketing didn't exactly suck.

 

I thought that applied to college football players.

 

Has nothing to do with making me feel superior to them. I'm on Do Not Call. Being on that list should be the primary indication to every business that I do not want to be solicited by anyone. It's not impolite to be on the Do Not Call list. It is impolite, not to mention illegal to violate that list.

Calling me means that the company is disregarding the law at best, and trying to steal from me at worst. I'm not going to be polite to somebody trying to steal from me.

 

Correct, although I guess it was unnecessary of me to cite the nationality.

 

I will put the people who clean hotel rooms as a far worse job. And I'm happy to leave them a few bucks for each night and even try to leave the room almost as clean as I found it.

Far, far worse than being a telemarketer.

 

I don't know. I'm not in daily journalism (or something resembling that) anymore but I can't think of how many times I called up total strangers with a bunch of noisy questions. And I shudder to think about when I'd phone up a source on deadline at nine-thirty in the evening. It's so, so easy to rationalize. ("Most people don't go to sleep before ten and heck, the assistant county commissioner is a public official, right?")

I'm not saying reporting is on the same level as telemarketing but at the end of the day (except for the scam artists), I'm sure these people would be doing something else with their lives if they could.

 

Migrant farm workers have it a little more difficult than telemarketers, too. What's your point?