Awesome thing to do/say to a telemarketer

[ApK]

Originally Posted by LCF

I suppose the someone would have been the rent, the grocery store and all the other evil people demanding money from him. Shame on them!

"Boo hoo! I'm a victim, Officer Krumpky! I can't be responsible for my choices! It's society's fault! Telemarketing and Welfare are the only options in the whole wide world!"

[kindlekitten]

hey people do what they gotta do. I spent a summer clipping the top fins off of farmed salmon to identify them to commercial fishermen. was it what I was trained to do or wanted to do? hell no. did it put beans on the table and kibble in the puppy bowls? yep! and at the time that was all that mattered

[ApK]

How 'bout dealing drugs or selling kiddie porn? It probably pays better.
Or is it possible that there usually are other options in these sorts of things than the false dichotomy presented?

It's one thing to acknowledge you took an annoying job you didn't like for short while. It's another to defend that job's respectability by claiming there was NO CHOICE and it was the ONLY thing between survival and doom.
No matter how bad the economy, I have NEVER seen an American want-ad section containing ONLY a telemarketing job.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by pholy

I think this thread has gotten long enough; it might as well be closed, it's going nowhere useful.

You're neither the OP nor a mod, yet you post to the thread just to tell other people that there is no reason to post to the thread?

Did you have to work on that sense of irony, or does it come naturally?

ApK

[tgnd]

I've been on both sides of the situation. I worked for almost 3 years in a call center for the University I attended, calling alumni for donations for scholarships. Now when my phone rings incessantly, I just consider that payback and turn the ringer off. Simple as that. But as a caller, I've been on the receiving end of just about everything. The single most effective way to make me never call you again? Tell me the person was deceased. I had a person once inform me that Mr So-and-so had just passed away last week. When I mumbled something along the lines of I'm so sorry, he asked me where I was calling from so I told him. His response? 'Oh.. I thought you were trying to sell me something! If you're calling from USC.. I'm not dead!!! ' He proceeded to make a fairly hefty donation that day even though he admitted that I HAD caught him during dinner.

I've had people pass their phone onto their babbling 3 year old. So I'd start chatting with the kid. When the parent realized I was actually taking the time to talk to the kid instead of hanging up, they came back on and I'd say no, give me back the kid.. we were having fun! I've had people ask me for my home number so they can call me during my dinner - I'd laugh and say that wouldn't do them any good.. I was at work during dinner time, but my break was in 15 minutes.. here's my work number, I'd be happy to talk to them during my break if they wanted to make a donation. I had one person take me up on that offer and end up making a small donation as a result because I took time during my dinner break to talk to them.

My most memorable call was the guy that my boss had pulled from the computer system and told me to call manually since he didn't want one of the less experienced callers bungling up the call as the guy was a big donor. I chased him for about 2 months, calling twice a week - and getting quite friendly with his wife in that time. The guy was a cardiac surgeon or some such thing so she never knew when he'd be home but she would suggest times to try calling and I'd follow up then. I finally got him at home one evening, and he put me on hold and passed the phone to someone. Turns out the president of my university was over for dinner that evening while they discussed a sizeable donation and he was so amused by being tackled from both sides that he passed the phone over to the pres for a minute. When I got him back on the phone I not only got him to agree to a donation to our department once again that year but asked him to consider doubling it to $20,000. He laughed and said it took some guts for me to do that.. nobody else had dared to ask him to up his donation in all the years that we'd been calling him, but because I had the guts to do so, he would.

Sure, there were also the people who cursed me out, called me every filthy name in th book, blew whistles into my ear and many other things. The attitude at my call center was that if the person on the other end is such a miserable person that they felt the need to resort to such measures when their alma mater called them, they must be pretty unhappy people, and we wouldn't let our lives be affected by them. Any person who was excessively rude was put on our inhouse do-not-call list so the callers wouldn't be subjected to them again either. There's no point in our calling someone who doesn't want to talk to us. But for the most part people realized we were a bunch of college students just trying to earn a living and were fairly pleasant to us. I actually enjoyed the job a great deal and if I could earn a decent living from it now, I wouldn't mind doing it again!

On the flip side, when I get repeated calls form telemarketers - as long as they're polite I am just as polite to them while telling them I am not interested, or informing them that I have passed away. (Oh it was such a tragedy!) It's when they start calling me repeatedly that I start pulling pranks on them. There is no reason that I need to be called 3 times a day for 3 weeks straight to be offered a payday loan. UGH. Those robocalls however make me very very cranky.

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by ApK

You're neither the OP nor a mod, yet you post to the thread just to tell other people that there is no reason to post to the thread?

Did you have to work on that sense of irony, or does it come naturally?

ApK

on my old computer I had a "humor button" picture, obviously there is still need for it. if you would have followed the link that pholy provided, you would have seen that he is actually making pfun of another thread in another forum.

pot? kettle?

[ApK]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

on my old computer I had a "humor button" picture, obviously there is still need for it. if you would have followed the link that pholy provided, you would have seen that he is actually making pfun of another thread in another forum.

pot? kettle?

A couple points:
1. I followed the link, and read the first few posts, but wasn't sure if he was making fun of it or just citing it as another example.
2. I thought it was a wonderfully ironic post. I just wasn't sure if it was intentional or not (because a lot forums get a lot of that without the poster meaning to be clever.)
3. I was going to post a couple more off topic responses to that post (like this one) JUST for the sake of making the thread longer, but I got distracted* and you called me on it, so now this post seems on topic and my own attempt at contributing to the irony has failed.

ApK

* would you believe I actually got distracted by a discussion elsewhere on the meaning of irony?

[anabolina]

ITA with you LCF, my opinion of Lady Fitzgerald certainly went down with each posting.

Work is work and money is important. Yes, I lasted only a day in a telemarketing job in College and it was horrible. I still do not understand why people have to be so abusive to someone who's just doing a job. Say no thank you and hang up or ask to go on their DNC list. Yes it disturbs people, but seriously, is it that bad? I went back to another phone-related sales position last year to make ends meet a bit better and the different between cold calls and warm calls was night and day. In the second position, people asked for information and would usually talk to me. Still, I'm really bad at sales and transferred to a different department 2 months later. Look at my trying to sale ya'll on my position right now, I don't really care if anyone agrees with me, just felt the need to put it out there to combat some of the negativity going on.

[carld]

I usually say *click*

[desertblues]

My husband was always rude to telemarketers and I got very angry with him. I said: we have a daughter of 21. If she needs a job and would rather go telemarketing then on welfare, and somebody would answer our daughter as you did, I would feel very sad.'
We had quite a row about it.
Now we both just say; ' thank you, no, but good luck trying'.
That doesn't cost that much and there's enough negativity in this world as it is.

[GeoffC]

Remember they may need the money, and not the aggro ....

At least be polite " Thank you for calling, but no thank you"

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by desertblues

My husband was always rude to telemarketers and I got very angry with him. I said: we have a daughter of 21. If she needs a job and would rather go telemarketing then on welfare, and somebody would answer our daughter as you did, I would feel very sad.'
We had quite a row about it.
Now we both just say; ' thank you, no, but good luck trying'.
That doesn't cost that much and there's enough negativity in this world as it is.

What a great answer! I'd had my fun with telemarketers when I was younger, but I hope I've grown a bit in the years since.

You're right! There's too much negativity in the world, and what does it really cost to give an answer like that?

[dsvick]

Originally Posted by altworld

Could try door to door salesman?

I hate them too. We always get the ones trying to get us to switch are gas or electricity provider. 9 times out of 10 I end up pulling out my bill and showing them that we're already getting a better rate than they are offering.

The best was the cute little blond girl (maybe 20 or so) who was selling some sort of children's book subscription or something like that. She showed up at the door, in the middle of summer, wearing bikers shorts, a very skimpy top that had buttons that had been opened up about half way to her belly button, and had her hair all let down over her shoulder. My wife answered and about a minute into the conversation when she realized my wife was about to close the door she said "Maybe I could talk to your husband?".

My wife let me talk for a minute or two then told me we had to go

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by dsvick

I hate them too. We always get the ones trying to get us to switch are gas or electricity provider. 9 times out of 10 I end up pulling out my bill and showing them that we're already getting a better rate than they are offering.

The best was the cute little blond girl (maybe 20 or so) who was selling some sort of children's book subscription or something like that. She showed up at the door, in the middle of summer, wearing bikers shorts, a very skimpy top that had buttons that had been opened up about half way to her belly button, and had her hair all let down over her shoulder. My wife answered and about a minute into the conversation when she realized my wife was about to close the door she said "Maybe I could talk to your husband?".

My wife let me talk for a minute or two then told me we had to go

back before I had the farm completely fenced I would get the occasional VERY determined salesmen (and missionaries). one particular time it was one of those frozen foods salesmen. it was towards the end of the day and he was trying to convince me that I should buy what was left on the truck so he didn't have to go unload. he would NOT take no for an answer. finally one of my Newfies came around the corner carrying the leg bone of a steer. in exasperation I pointed to the dog and the bone and said; "that's what happened to the LAST salesman that wouldn't take no for an answer". he left. quickly.

the next part is pretty cool... I relayed this story at the butcher where I got the leg bones while a lot of people were in there shopping. the butcher immediately sold out of bones, and the next time I came in they gave me a free roast in appreciation

[The Terminator]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

back before I had the farm completely fenced I would get the occasional VERY determined salesmen (and missionaries). one particular time it was one of those frozen foods salesmen. it was towards the end of the day and he was trying to convince me that I should buy what was left on the truck so he didn't have to go unload. he would NOT take no for an answer. finally one of my Newfies came around the corner carrying the leg bone of a steer. in exasperation I pointed to the dog and the bone and said; "that's what happened to the LAST salesman that wouldn't take no for an answer". he left. quickly.

the next part is pretty cool... I relayed this story at the butcher where I got the leg bones while a lot of people were in there shopping. the butcher immediately sold out of bones, and the next time I came in they gave me a free roast in appreciation

LMAO that awesome