Telemarketers
I am sitting in a midtown pub tucking into a chicken wrap and a pint when the thought strikes me.
Is anyone in here a telemarketer?
I had, quite by accident, a nice chat with a telemarketer the evening before at my office. The phone rang and the caller ID came up with a number I didn’t recognize but for some reason thought might be a recruiter come to offer me the Dream Job of a Lifetime to Take Me Away From All Of This (I was working late and the prospect of employment anywhere else seemed like a good idea at the time). Instead it was a telemarketer. On my work phone.
The area code was 515 which Google reveals is in Iowa. Des Moines particularly. I didn’t realize she was a telemarketer at the outset because she said she was calling on behalf of a company that my company is partnered with on a particular venture. I stayed on the line thinking she was going to offer me That Job.
Instead, she offered me something that I could get for free from work. I told her this and she laughed. The din behind her sounded like a hundred angry air traffic controllers guiding in a fleet of drunken pilots. She seemed pleasant enough but after the interlude where I told here there was no chance I would keep the product even if I accepted the offer she went back to the script. No obligation, she said. Return the first one in 14 days and that’s it she said.
In a moment of weakness, I said “sure” figuring we’d get the item and pop it right back in the mail. But still it would count towards her sales goal and help her out. Why did I care? Well, do any of you know any telemarketers? I don’t. It’s funny, the telemarketer is an object of scorn and ridicule but they’re also your fellow Americans, maybe even relatives, neighbors, or friends of friends and they’re trying to eke out a living in a collapsing economy like the rest of us are. I googled around looking to see if some enterprising person had done a documentary or a novel on their lot in life and came up empty. The top search results were mainly how to avoid them or torture them. I’ve never been a telemarketer but right there is an opening in the American literary landscape. What Charles Bukowski did for the post office someone needs to do for those poor bastards who sit with headphones on all day being mocked, tortured and rejected by their fellow Americans.
Not like I’ll pick up the phone deliberately for one of course. But I do recognize their humanity and their need to make a buck or two like the rest of us working slobs.
I took a pull off my pint and looked around again. The pub was the kind of well-lit, tourist-attracting nightmare that I normally avoid but it was staffed by Irish bartenders, the sort where the girls call you “Love” L-U-V and the guys call you “buddy” or “man” as in “Whut canneye gechoo, man? Anoother piyint?” There’s a certain authenticity to those places that attracts me even when they’re made bright and clean and tourist-friendly because most of the tourists are headed up the block to Olive Garden anyway and the sort that turn up in this place are generally OK as tourists go. It’s not my favorite, but it is close so I’ll take it.
I paid my tab and walked out into the sunlit afternoon. The doors in the church directly across the street were wide open revealing a beautiful altar. This is the moment where a true souse might walk out of a bar like this, look across, see the beauty in the church and lay down his life for Jesus, quit the bottle and be converted forever.
Of course, I had only had a chicken sandwich and two pints, wasn’t under the influence at all and instead thought “Damn, they’re just begging to be ripped off.”
I wandered back to the office to eke out another buck or two.
Is anyone in here a telemarketer?
I had, quite by accident, a nice chat with a telemarketer the evening before at my office. The phone rang and the caller ID came up with a number I didn’t recognize but for some reason thought might be a recruiter come to offer me the Dream Job of a Lifetime to Take Me Away From All Of This (I was working late and the prospect of employment anywhere else seemed like a good idea at the time). Instead it was a telemarketer. On my work phone.
The area code was 515 which Google reveals is in Iowa. Des Moines particularly. I didn’t realize she was a telemarketer at the outset because she said she was calling on behalf of a company that my company is partnered with on a particular venture. I stayed on the line thinking she was going to offer me That Job.
Instead, she offered me something that I could get for free from work. I told her this and she laughed. The din behind her sounded like a hundred angry air traffic controllers guiding in a fleet of drunken pilots. She seemed pleasant enough but after the interlude where I told here there was no chance I would keep the product even if I accepted the offer she went back to the script. No obligation, she said. Return the first one in 14 days and that’s it she said.
In a moment of weakness, I said “sure” figuring we’d get the item and pop it right back in the mail. But still it would count towards her sales goal and help her out. Why did I care? Well, do any of you know any telemarketers? I don’t. It’s funny, the telemarketer is an object of scorn and ridicule but they’re also your fellow Americans, maybe even relatives, neighbors, or friends of friends and they’re trying to eke out a living in a collapsing economy like the rest of us are. I googled around looking to see if some enterprising person had done a documentary or a novel on their lot in life and came up empty. The top search results were mainly how to avoid them or torture them. I’ve never been a telemarketer but right there is an opening in the American literary landscape. What Charles Bukowski did for the post office someone needs to do for those poor bastards who sit with headphones on all day being mocked, tortured and rejected by their fellow Americans.
Not like I’ll pick up the phone deliberately for one of course. But I do recognize their humanity and their need to make a buck or two like the rest of us working slobs.
I took a pull off my pint and looked around again. The pub was the kind of well-lit, tourist-attracting nightmare that I normally avoid but it was staffed by Irish bartenders, the sort where the girls call you “Love” L-U-V and the guys call you “buddy” or “man” as in “Whut canneye gechoo, man? Anoother piyint?” There’s a certain authenticity to those places that attracts me even when they’re made bright and clean and tourist-friendly because most of the tourists are headed up the block to Olive Garden anyway and the sort that turn up in this place are generally OK as tourists go. It’s not my favorite, but it is close so I’ll take it.
I paid my tab and walked out into the sunlit afternoon. The doors in the church directly across the street were wide open revealing a beautiful altar. This is the moment where a true souse might walk out of a bar like this, look across, see the beauty in the church and lay down his life for Jesus, quit the bottle and be converted forever.
Of course, I had only had a chicken sandwich and two pints, wasn’t under the influence at all and instead thought “Damn, they’re just begging to be ripped off.”
I wandered back to the office to eke out another buck or two.
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