Tuesday, June 06, 2006

I think I'm doing the right thing.

On the first weekday at my new residence, we received about 12 calls, all but two were telemarketers. Since I sleep during the day, most of those came while I was in bed. They usually show up as "Toll Free" on the Caller ID box, or "Unknown Caller."

I do what I can to have patience with the people on the other end. I almost accepted a job at a local Public Broadcaster in their fundrasing department that included cold-calling people and hitting them up for cash. I couldn't do it. Two friends from college did telemarketing for a summer and hated it, so I try to have some compassion. However, they told me that the best thing to do was to hang up -- that way the person on the other end will be saved from having to read from the "What if they say 'no'?" script. When I told them that it sounded rude, they disagreed, saying there's little worse in that profession than reading all the script and then being rejected.

So, now I hang up during their preamble. I don't think I'm being rude. Telemarketers have called twice since I started this, one being the same newspaper for the 4th time in two days.

On the plus side, I'm now on the national Do Not Call list. However, I hear that they can't make marketing calls to cell phones, so maybe there's an upside to those newfangled wireless things....

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