Oh, dear. The New Year has barely pulled itself up on the coffee table before attempting its first steps, and already I've got a bone to pick.
The phone rang last night as I was just sitting down to supper. You'd think I would let it ring. Let the answering machine pick up. Let my personal secretary, The Pony, screen my calls. But no. I thought it might be something important. Only the night before, Hick's security service had called the minute he got home about an alarm at work. Or maybe it was school, automatedly calling to inform me that we would miss our first day back, due to a pack of solid ice still on my mile of gravel. But it was neither.
"Is this Vale Victorthian?"
"Um. Yeeessss..."
"Of Bake Rowaddis, Montana--I mean, MISSOURI?"
"Um. Yeeesss..."
"This is U R Bank calling from a cold and windy Chicago. How's your weather out there?"
"Cold."
"What kind of temperatures did you guys get today?"
"Uh..."CLICK!
Give me a freakin' break! You're either phone phishing for my personal financial information, or you're one of those bank idiots interrupting me at supper time or bed time asking how everything is going with my account, and asking if there's anything you can do for me, and telling me that there are no problems with my account, that this is JUST A COURTESY CALL!
"I'd like to thank you, RAE DAWN, for being that telemarketer who interrupts my meal and/or my sleep pattern. You are the one who can't bother to pronounce either of my names correctly. Who does not know the name of my town, nor the proper postal code abbreviations for our fifty states. You are that telemarketer who wants to tell me about your day, and make small talk about the weather in my locale, a locale which you could not find on a map with a flashlight, a magnifying glass, two hands, and the assistance of a world-record-holding map reader. Please read my lips and remember, as hard as it is to believe, that sometimes, we account-holders like eating supper, sometimes we like settling down to an uninterrupted slumber, and most times, we just like being left alone."
Whew! I feel better now.
When people call at the dinner hour trying to sell me something I tell them I'm glad they called and ask them to wait a minute while I fetch my credit card. I set down the phone without hanging up and go back to eating my dinner.
ReplyDeleteAnd if Suzanne was there, she could have shot her gun off to scare the telemarketer away.
ReplyDeleteAfter having a Julia Sugarbaker rant, I ALWAYS feel better. It sounds like you had all the circuits firing for a moment there.
Haha! There's a fine line between building rapport and irritating the hell out of!!! Sadly, we know it all too well downunder too!
ReplyDeleteAs annoying as telemarketers are I sometimes feel sorry for them. Here they are trying to earn a little grocery money and the only job they can land is aggravating and irritating the general public. I've always wanted to tell them they've called the Psychic Hotline and then give them a free reading. "I sense you are a desperate person. You hate your pointless job and your incompetent boss. I'm getting vibes of hopelessness and..."
ReplyDeleteWe got a call from someone trying to sell us the lifeline button. I'll give her a life line!
ReplyDeleteStephen,
ReplyDeleteI especially like that touch of getting their hopes up while you waste their time.
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Sioux,
To be fair, Noel the pig, Consuela the housekeeper, or Anthony Bouvier, he of the unfortunate incarceration, could have done a scare-away equal to the echo of a gunshot.
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Red,
That's the thing. Politely get to the point, make your pitch, and I'll simply say, "Sorry, not interested." Don't act like my long-lost or new-best friend and waste my time.
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Leenie,
At least they are working. But they need to make their spiel efficient. No chatting about the weather like I am in their hair salon for a cut and color.
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Linda,
Imagine, for a moment, that you have fallen and cannot arise. You push the lifeline button that you had so secretly yearned for, and lickety-splittedly acquired when somebody FINALLY offered to sell it to you by phone. And then...the person on the other end starts chatting with you about the weather. While you are mired on the floor in a puddle of your own flop-sweat.
These phonies must be better trained.
It hasn't happened of late, but I must have had a child-like voice when I was younger. The caller would ask to speak to my mommy or daddy. I got out of a lot of calls like that. Although ..... sometimes I could amuse myself with these callers. Like telling them that I was home all alone and I was scared. This was before caller ID and such. I could keep them going for awhile. When they would ask my age, I would say "this many" as if holding up my fingers.
ReplyDeleteI seem to have lost that girlish voice .....
Kathy,
ReplyDeleteOoh! The contrariness runs deep in you, my dear! Of course, that is based on the assumption that those callers actually cared what happened to you. Not that they were perverts or anything. You can't be too careful these days.