2002-06-17 10:51 p.m.

Telemarketers' Courtesy School

Before I even picked up the phone, I knew it was going to be a telemarketer.

No one who knows me and actually expects to talk to me calls me at this time on a weeknight. I'm at work, or eating dinner out, or at a baseball game, or elbow-deep in kneading up a loaf of healthful whole-grain bread and can't come to the phone. (OK, in fantasy land. Back here in reality I'm probably "cooking" a cup of yogurt, or mixing up a gin and tonic out of that monstrous Costco bottle of Bombay Sapphire and, as our British brethren say, can't be arsed to pick up. But this one's about my phone issues; my domestic inadequacies and drinking problems are for another time.)

So Mom tends to call while I'm on my way home from work and leaves sad little messages asking me to call her back. (At least she's stopped doing this in the middle of the day, though. That was particularly odd since my last stretch of unemployment was in 1997.) My brother calls me at work. Dad splits the difference by calling me while I'm on my way in to work and leaving messages at home and at work. And most of my friends learned long ago to just e-mail me.

But I digress. Back to the telemarketer.

Ring. Riiiiiiiiiiiing. Ring!

"Hello?"

"Hello, Mrs. Nest?" drones the telemarketer. And waits.

Huh?

First off, it's not Mrs. Nest. That's pretty typically telemarketer, to tack on this faux courtesy title that I don't actually use and probably never will. I say "faux courtesy title" because if they were really courteous, they'd read out of their little dossier on me and call me by the title I actually use, instead of pissing me off right out of the gate. Though to her credit, she managed not to mispronounce "Nest."

Second, what's with the pause? I imagine this woman and a dozen of her underpaid cohorts sitting obediently at their desks in Telemarketers' Courtesy School, listening to some matron out of a Far Side cartoon talk about how not to annoy the customer while, well, annoying the customer.

"Ladies, be sure and pause after you say the customer's name. This gives them an opportunity to blow their cover, as well as fooling them into thinking that you'll treat them kindly. And be sure to call all women Mrs. since they really like that whether or not they're married. Except for that Nest woman in California. She has issues."

So I give the telemarketer my usual "put me on your do not call list" response, which she passively accepts, and then, as I wanted all along, she goes away.

None of the telemarketing sites I visited told me whether there really is a Telemarketers' Courtesy School. But I did find that the vast majority of people are as annoyed by this as I am. (Well, maybe except for the "Mrs." part.)

According to a 1989 Roper survey quoted on donotcall.com, 83% of those surveyed prefer not to get telemarketing calls and 11% said it depends. So that other 6% (including the sad-ass 0.1% who Field found actually liked getting telemarketing calls) are ruining it for the rest of us. That other 6% (and possibly some of the other 94% who cave once in a while) spent $230 billion last year on crap sold to them over the phone.

These people are probably the same people who fly to Nigeria to arrange bank transfers. Once again, stupid people ruin it for the rest of us.

join my Notify List and get email when I update my site:
email:
Powered by NotifyList.com