07-035
According to a recent survey conducted by a group of people with nothing better to do, telemarketers are the biggest scourge on the country today. I agree with these findings. Perhaps this is because I’d rather not even talk on the phone to people I do know. Nor do I like to talk to people I know even if they are standing right in front of me.
I don’t think the telemarketers actually want to talk to anyone either. I imagine that they have been instructed to call every home in the country, listen to each answering machine, then hang up. I would like to send an electrical current of perhaps 50,000 international volts Greenwich Mean Time through the phone line, just to get their attention, and also to injure them. But I suspect that may be illegal.
Given that I have an inordinate amount of free time on my hands, I am able to ponder the possible motivation a person might have for becoming a telemarketer. I have decided that one obvious perk to the position is that it allows ample time for hijinks. After extensive research, I am now able to reconstruct a typical telemarketer’s shift:
It is particularly maddening when (and this is proof telemarketers don’t really want to speak to you at all) a business doesn’t even bother to use an actual human to place the call. The non-human has no problem leaving a message. I remember when, back before his life became complicated, Mike Tyson called me. He had a legitimate reason. He was fighting that weekend and he wanted to leave a message just for me! So I came home and there was Tyson’s voice on my answering machine, ordering me to watch his fight on HBO. When I discovered it was not actually the champ but rather a mere recording, I felt duped. At least he could’ve had the courtesy to call me himself. Ah but he was probably busy with problems of his own.
I can thank telemarketers for one thing. Because of them I have not answered the phone for the last decade. In fact my goal is a phone that never rings again. I assumed that the words on my answering machine were duly discouraging: “Leave a message. If your message concerns injury to life or limb, leave a message on someone else’s machine. If the news is even worse, hang up now. Do not call back. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.”
The message has not fazed the telemarketers. But it has scared off everyone else.