Support Your Local Telemarketer
by Telemarketers are annoying, no doubt about it. They interrupt you at dinner time, they try and sell you things you don’t need, and they are a general pain in the neck. But behind every annoying telephone call is a living, breathing human being trying desperately to make a living.
I have an admission to make – I have been that annoying voice on the other end of your telephone line; the one who calls you while you are eating dinner or getting ready to take a bath. I have been that persistently annoying guy who is trying to sell you something you don’t even need or want. My experiences as a telemarketer have taught me a lot about people, about business, and about myself. I am going to share some of that knowledge with you.
I first took a job telemarketing because I was desperate. I had been laid off from my business to business sales job when the start-up company I was working for closed their doors. I live in a town with a tough economy – there aren’t a whole lot of jobs out there for the taking. I served a stint in a local Indian casino, pushing a cart filled with change around and filling up slot machines when they emptied. That paid $8 an hour. I lasted 3 months before the incompetence and the general grotesqueness of the environment conspired to drive me out. I didn’t know what to do. This was in January of 2001 – a notoriously slow month. No one seemed to be hiring. A temp agency hooked me up with an interview, but they wouldn’t even tell me what the job was. It was telemarketing. I was horrified. But I was also desperate. I took the job.
Initially I thought the job would involve 4 hour shifts consisting of being screamed at by angry residents – that I’d be fighting off tears and that I wouldn’t last through the first shift. But that impression couldn’t have been further from the truth.
People are generally pleasant. This surprised me. Most people, if they weren’t interested in the service we were offering, would politely say “no thank you,” before hanging up the phone. It was only the rare individual who was downright ornery and mean-spirited; and after getting one of them on the phone we would generally hang up, take a deep breath, and then laugh a little. I would find myself wondering what was so wrong with that person’s life that they had to take it out on a total stranger trying to make a living on the phone.
Telemarketers are people too! Telemarketing is a good job for students because generally they would call at night. Why do telemarketers always seem to call when you’re eating dinner? Because you’re home! I worked day-time and night-time shifts and generally you got to talk to a lot more people during a night-time shift.
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