Hella-marketing

Incoming call: 877.237.2456.  "877?"  Time to blow off some steam.

"Hello?  Yes, this is Mr. Presto and I'd like to buy one of everything.  I don't care what you are selling, but please sign me up all of it." I've often fantasized about answering one of these calls in this way, but usually pussy out from sheer pity for the miserable soul on the other end of the line.

The life of a telemarketer is a rotten thing.  A horrible existence.  I'm speaking from experience.  I worked at a call center with MCI for a few months in 2002.  I called people with the sole intent of getting them to switch to a more expensive long distance service by luring them with promises of frequent flyer miles that they would most likely never use.  I was even able to legally tell them "I'm not selling anything" when they persisted.  If I was speaking to a house wife who believed what I was telling her, it was my purpose to con her into making a deal with me before she got a chance to discuss it with her husband.  I can only imagine how many battered wives I forced into a pill addiction.

To sell products to the general public is one thing.  But there exists such a stigma with telemarketers, to attempt to do it successfully poses the risk of serious mental instability and/or suicidal tendencies.  Not only are you attempting to sell a useless product via a telephone call.  For all intents and purposes, you are invading the home of your client at an inconvenient time (Maury may be on).  You are calling people who more than likely already hate you.  If they can't tell from the caller ID that you are a telemarketer, the 2-second silence that precedes your voice not only indicates that they are about to encounter a complete asshole trying to sell them something, it also gives them two seconds to prepare and compile all of the hate they are going to need to really fuck you up.

That's if they are smart enough to understand that the 2-second pause is caused by the automatic-call software.  As the telemarketer, you are constantly calling someone new even before the current person hangs up on you.  On several occasions, my headset clicked on to hear the middle of a conversation someone was having with themselves that was directed toward me.  I still remember one verbatim: "...don't know who you are, but I'm going to find you and fucking kill you."  I'm not making that up.  He didn't accept the offer I had that day.

So, the next time you receive a call from a telemarketer, understand that he has been lit up by several people already that day.  If anything, you should do these poor people a favor and try to liven up their day.  Tell them you can only speak English but that you can't understand it as it's spoken to you.  Tell them that your pet Komodo Dragon makes all of your financial decisions.  Tell them you can't talk now because the dog hasn't finished licking all of the peanut butter off of your...spoon.  Pervert, what did you think I was going to say?