The angry ranting of a telemarketer - Comments

I've had to play the telemarketer before, doing fundraisers for my school choir; thus, I know what it's like to have strangers be assholes on the phone, so I don't make a point of harassing telemarketers. (And somehow, I always got the awkward depressing ones - "Hello, is ___ there?" "No, I'm sorry, he passed away recently." "Shit, really?")

My sister's college roommate is a telemarketer, and she hates it. She decided to stop going this week (next week is her last), and she had my sister answer her phone when her boss called. The boss now thinks the number is a new one for a young girl who nearly burst out crying on the phone, and that the roommate broke her phone and couldn't get in touch with him/her (I dunno the boss).

Yep, I've always felt bad for the telemarketers. But there was this carpet salesman who kept calling even when we said the magic words "take me off the list". It'd been going on for over six months. So we put my sister, who was six at the time, on the phone after telling her she was our mom. She spent about an hour describing the purple flying carpet that she wanted. When he called back the next day, she demanded to know where it was. He didn't call back again. XD But thanks for sharing the inner workings of the telemarket-er-ing job - t'was very interesting indeed.

I used to have a job similar to this but it was taking orders for fast food restraunts. Cause most pplaces have like a sepratebuilding in diff states where people take your orders and some people can really get to you cause they feel the need to scream. But what is worse are the whisper's, you cant hear a dam thing they say and then have to sit and try and decode their damm message. Luckily I got out of that job. Funny, I am a political science major too, what school do you go to?

It's always people like them who brighten your day.

I know a few people like him. God, I miss them too.
Damned school transfer and the general dislike of texting people! Why do you vex me so? D:

Anyways. It was wonderful fun talking to you, but it's 4 am and I am tuckered out.
I know someone who's going to have bloodshot eyes in the morninggg!

... Whoopee.

They do that, actually. xD Sometimes Not like, scheduled regularly, but the bossman has a few favorite calls from the past that crack us up every time we hear them and there are always new ones being added, he'll just play them randomly during lunch breaks when he gets bored and we gather 'round and giggle. =) But the stuff that's so absurd you just can't help but laugh comes few and far between.

I miss working at the old call center (I work for the same company as I did a year ago, but they have centers in various cities and when I moved for school I transferred to the call center for the same company but in the new city), when I worked with this dude Taylor. Because he could make ANY call into one of those. Everything from really badly done accents, to pretending to cry on the phone, to just throwing out the most random irrelevant crap during calls. And he pulled it off SO WELL, and got a fuckton of pledges that way, I never knew how he did it. But it was hilarious to sit by him. I miss that kid.

Your work should have a session once a month or something -- or you should do it yourself -- where they get the employees to sit down and laugh at some of the ridiculous stuff they have heard while on the job.

My mom worked in a really stressfull (read: holy shit, the whole company would have made a cardiologist a fucking billionaire because their blood pressures were so high) company, and a group of her and her coworkers would sit down every week or so and just laugh about how idiotic the management was.

Once she started doing that, she was so much better.

It's all about finding the positive in the negative -- or in this case, the funny in the shit-load of everything else.

lol you should read the post I made. I dedicated an entire journal once to all the stupid conspiracy theories surrounding Obama.

I'm surprised with my ability to handle telemarketing. I started out with your same mindset, and carried that through my entire 9 months of my first telemarketing job and about the first 8 months of this one. I've now been at this job though for 19 months total, and I'm out of patience for telemarketing as a whole. I like talking to you though. You're reminding me how to sit back, point, and laugh at the stupid people I encounter, and I'd kind of forgotten that. I get so wrapped up in the frustration I forget how ridiculous it all really is sometimes. xD

Um, newsflash.
Obama totally is the anti-christ.

psh. lyk, oh em gee. GAWD. silly democrat.

But seriously, I think I would love that job. For maybe a day. And then I'd probably want to kill myself. Or get fired by being ridiculously rude/obnoxious to whoever you call. And then I'd want my job back...

But whatever.

COMMUNIST AMERICA'S TIME WILL COME!

lol. Yeah, I'd hate all of that. But I want to do it to prove a point. One of those "Some day I ought to..." type things, haha.

Yeah, I have never gotten a death threat at this job. Though, you do deal with a lot of crazies. See, I"m not Republican, but I work at a Republican call center because it's the only job I can find that will work for me with my college schedule and such. And it would be one thing if I was calling moderates, because I'm moderate myself. But this is the "conservative base," which means these are the people that, given the opportunity, would probably give their entire life savings for the opportunity to literally kiss Glenn Beck's ass. And I occasionally hear people, in all seriousness, tell me that Obama is the Antichrist; that they think the country will either no longer exist, or will be completely communist before the next election; and that they think we should organize for Obama and some key Democrats to be shot because it'd be cheaper and faster than campaigning against them. o_o The old job with the mortgage stuff was a lot worse with the personal attacks, though. But I dealt with it, I suppose.

YES!

I wanted to go to boot camp. I still do. Apart from the whole get up super early thing... Oh, and the physical exertion. And the shouting.

Not to mention obeying orders. Yeah, that's not for me.

But the rest of it, I could totally do.

And death threats? That sounds like a real hoot. In a strangely twisted way.

lol. Oh, people have called me all sorts of things. Usually I'm just taking the brunt of the blame for whatever politicians have screwed up on most recently, because I do political fundraising currently, but I heard all kinds of colorful things when I used to work at a call center for mortgage companies about three years ago. I got my first death threat two weeks into the job, and all kinds of weird accusations...one woman thought I was "that little whore that's been sleeping with my husband!" and insisted she would "find" me. I've had people threaten to track me down. Usually you know they're not serious, and even if they are, the calls are recorded so if I felt threatened I could report the person and they'd get in trouble.

lol. I know how that goes. I'm DEFINITELY not the kind of person who could handle the military--I am one of the least structured people I know, one of those head-in-the-clouds types. But I've always wanted to go through Marine Corps boot camp (which apparently is the toughest boot camp) just to prove I can. I'm weird like that.

It's the little things that make life better.

In this case, the little things just happen to be not calling you a good-for-nothing jack ass who is intent on wasting other peoples' time. If someone has actually called you that, a) that is kind of weird, but plausible and b) I'm sorry if that brought up any unpleasant memories.

I do not know if that was sarcasm or not.

And I don't think I'm one of those laid-back people. I'm just up for the challenge.

lol. It costs a lot of money to have real people read those messages. They still do it though, in some places. Minnesota and I think Georgia both have specific restrictions on autoplaying messages.

I don't think that's crazy. There are some people who are totally cut out for telemarketing, the more laid back types who don't take any of this crap seriously. I am not one of them. And even for those who do just let it all roll off their backs, I'm sure they still appreciate people like you who are civil on the phone. Calls where the person is actually responding to what I'm saying and making it conversational instead of forced like it usually is seriously make my day. And in return I usually make a point to thank the person, to tell them they're one of the more pleasant calls I've had and that they've made the day a little better for me, haha.

Oh, definitely.

When they call us up at dinner and interrupt my invigorating conversation -- HAH -- with my parents, I tend to be at a total loss. That seemingly victorious fist pump? It's in dismay.

But yeah. I've kind of always wanted to be a telemarketer; not because I'm crazy, though that might be part of it, but because I want to see what it's like. And then after a week or two, I'd quit and get on with my life. It's on my bucket list, you see. XD

Kay, not really. But I am adding it (mentally) as I am typing this.

This is just rambling, I'm sorry. Basically, I totally understand the whole "human" aspect of this. I treat them (i.e. telemarketers) in a civilized manner, because that's how my momma raised me. Treat people how you want to be treated and yadayadayada.

Now the automated voice systems... That's a whole other story. Cheap-ass bastards can't hire real people...

v Glad I could amuse you. =) The point was to try and show a human side, and that we're not all assholes (I freely admit some are), but still get a point across that we're still human beings and we do get pretty frustrated with the bullshit we have to put up with, y'know? And to keep it entertaining so you didn't lose interest because long angry rants about people you already don't want to put up with aren't the best to read at this hour, haha.

My aunt's a telemarketer. I met her for the first time last week and I got this exact same speech, except not quite as funny. :] But that might be because she's a little cuckoo.

Thankfully, I'm not the one who has to answer the phone for said calls. My dad does, and there is no way in hell that he's going to change his ways.

(P.S. guys trying to play XBOX 360 while on the phone with you? that'd be hillarious.
... But I laugh at stuff like that. And that's why I could never be a telemarketer. I'd end up insulting the "customers" in some way and get fired.)

Kudos to you for writing this. :D It made my day, even though it's three in the morning.

v That's understandable. Both telemarketing jobs I've done, the moment the words "take me off the list" come up, you read the disclaimer and let them go. =/ I don't understand any company that WOULDN'T implement that policy. The thing is, it's usually in the job description and the best thing you can do is to hang up. Trust me, we sympathize and most of the time we wish we didn't have to keep pushing. There is NOTHING I hate more than to have someone tell me he's been out of work for a year, his wife just got laid off, too, and his unemployment checks aren't going to be available much longer, and still be required to ask for a donation. =/

I have to say well played. The only, ONLY thing I hate about being cold called is when they won't give up. Even after being very polite and asking them to take you off the list, explaining that maybe at another time in the future but not currently, they just keep talking! If I have to ask someone three times to take me off the list and they keep going is when I start to get a little pissy.

v Aw. I didn't mean to make anyone feel bad. Trust me, I know how annoying telemarketers are, haha. It's part of the reason I hate my job. People on the phone just say a lot of stupid and counter-productive things. And most of the time they're screwing me AND themselves over and don't even realize that they're only making the telemarketer situation worse for themselves. =/

But, I definitely am grateful to everyone who is nice to the telemarketers. =) You'd be surprised how helpful it is, during a long day after twelve people in a row have screamed in your ear, to talk to someone genuinely nice. It seriously puts you in a really good mood for the next several calls.