telemarketing

a brief window into the wretched world of telemarketing

         “We’re sorry.  The number you dialed is no longer in service at this time.  If you feel you’ve reached this message in error, please hang up the phone and try again.”  Just what I was looking to hear.  That is, I was looking to hear that I didn’t have to talk to anybody.  “We’re sorry.  The number you dialed is no longer in service at this time.  If you feel you’ve reached this message in error, please hang up the phone and try again.”  There it goes again. One more time I think.  “We’re sorry. The number you dialed is no longer in service at this time. Goodbye.”  Now just silence—but I don’t hang up the phone, hell no, I can ride this one out another three minutes easy.

      I’m beating a rhythm out against my desk, contemplating the silent phone line, as I hear Slick Ivan, two desks down, pitching his line to some guy in Missouri.  “This is gonna change your life!  Just let me ask one question, ok?”—saying ‘one’ really slowly and ‘ok?’ in a bright, chipper tone—“What…would you say…if I told you…there was a way…to make money…and”—dragging out the ‘and’, recalling the rest of the script from the place in his mind where it’s been eternally burned—“ there was no risk?...”—he leaves the guy on the other end of the phone half a second to think, and maybe say a few words, and continues railing away—“Alright…well…I can’t for the life of me see what there is to think about!”  All the while, he gesticulates with his right hand, pointing his finger in a tense, slightly-curled point, and he’s slamming his fist down on the desk in a rhythm, the same rhythm with which he’s reciting the script, from memory, brightening the tone on each keyword, all of which strategically fall on the beat as well.  “Stay with me Richard. Richard?...Richard, this is gonna change your life, I’m tellin’ ya”—an amiable smile infecting his snout, as though Richard can see him smiling—“Richard? Richard? Dammit!  I had him! He pulled over his truck and everything…ugh!”—his arms frustratedly waving through the air.  He turns to walk away, sullenly muttering “was gonna do a check by phone” to himself, but then abruptly turns around with a huge smile on his face, yelling “all right, somebody get me a tape…now I’m pumped up, gonna get me a sale!”—shouting ‘sale’ emphatically, his open palm falling to the desk with a crash, and he heads towards the back office, both hands behind the back of his head as he swaggers off, muttering to himself some complaint regarding Richard.

      What he means by “tape” is this:  Our goal as “dialers”, a prestigious title I know, is to get these fools on the other end of the phone to listen to an audio-cassette, outlining the supposed “life-changing” business plan.  After they listen to this “tape”, a “closer” takes over the call.  The closer explains that Tyler had to take an incoming call and introduces themselves (I was really only making more, unsolicited calls in other states at that point).  Ideally, the closer badgers the weak-minded individual on the phone into spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on some start-up package, to get them on the road to “financial freedom”.  So when this slick-looking character named Ivan is saying “get me a tape”, what he really means, but doesn’t say, is: “get me an imbecile, who’s gonna drop 600 bucks into this business, on the phone, after hearing about it for 20 minutes, from two pushy telemarketers…sometimes even three.”

         I look at the call length on my telephone at my “own desk”, one of the supposed perks of this job, as it was explained to me on my first day (pah, my own desk)—and decide I’ve pushed it far enough, they might notice that I haven’t dialed anyone in 5 minutes and 36 seconds, so I hang up and dial another number, hoping for the machine. 

         I remember Suzanne, the top dialer, with trophies strewn about her “own desk”, telling me, on my first day, how great this job is.  “It’s really easy…this job.  I mean, if you think about it…what are you doing all day?  You’re just talking to people…I mean it’s that simple.  You get to come in here,”—she cheerfully gestures around the room with her arms, an eerie smile on her face, seemingly not belonging to her at all—“in this air conditioned office...and believe me, you’ll be thankful for that in the summertime…”—and I’m thinking to myself ”there’s no way in hell I’ll be here in three weeks, let alone the summertime, 7 months away”—she keeps talking, jerking her head around, in any random direction at the start of each little phrase, emphasizing certain words in that manner I suppose—“…when it’s 110 degrees, believe me”—she says ‘believe me’ too damn many times for me to believe her—“And you get to sit in this nice comfortable chair, and all you’re doing is talking to people”—in a nostalgic tone—“and you can make a ton of money”—“sure, if you’re into ripping people off on a daily basis”, I think to myself, but she goes on—“it’s really a cake job, and you can make it fun…have fun with the people, you can joke around with em, ya know…and if they’re rude, don’t take the abuse, you can hang right up on em…you’re better than that…you don’t have to take any abuse from them, understand?”—“They must deal with a lot of insecure fucks at this job, the way they keep catering to my emotions, geez…”—“Yeah, I’m not too worried about it”, I reply—“And you just sit at your own desk”—big emphasis on ‘own’—“it’s yours, ya know…you sit at the same one every day”—“awesome, right next to this fucking nut-case”—“and you just talk to people…that’s the job, it’s that simple…and you can make a ton of money, believe me”

         Across the room I see Michelle, leaning her forehead into her hands, her elbows propped up on the desk, and she’s saying, to herself but loud enough for everyone to hear, “I don’t wanna be here today”, the distress at the prospect of being trapped in this wretched room for six hours more clearly expressed through, not only her words, but her defeated body language.

         “That’s no attitude to have…you’re just setting yourself up for defeat”—a knowing grin of arrogance showing on Brad’s dumb face, his beady eyes, cutting into Michelle’s, who’s now looking up, meeting his challenge, his bald head gleaming in the fluorescent lighting, his whole head taking on a goofy expression and nodding up and down like a bobble-head doll—“If you start thinking like that….there’s no way that you’re gonna make any sales…you’ve just gotta think positive…come on, think positive and you’ll be positive.”  Brad doesn’t make very many sales due to his inadequate supply of good brain cells, and clearly feels clever at his previous remark, his face arrogantly beaming, although it’s the same dribble that all these imbeciles feed off of and repeat to each other all day, like the mindless drones they’ve been modeled after.

         “You know what?...You’re right Brad”—Michelle’s eye’s light up as her head nods agreement—“I’m…ready to go”—dragging ‘I’m’ out slowly, but ‘ready to go’ coming out so fast, it’s almost like one, quickly uttered, little word, and she goes on—“let’s do this!”—her face is fucking glowing now, she really buys this trash—“Brad…I’m gonna get four sales today…you hear that?  FOUR SALES!”
         
      “That’s more like it…now I’m pumped up!” Brad nods his approval, only it’s a more reasonable, steady nod, not that bo-jangled madness he was pulling before.  I don’t know why but they love saying that—‘I’m pumped up’, and the ‘up’ is always shouted as they twist their heads about from the neck, to give the word ‘up’ more emphasis.

         “Come on team!”  Slick Ivan enthusiastically shouts out to the whole room, having re-emerged from his office.  “Let’s get excited!  Michelle, that’s what I like to hear, but why shoot for four, I mean, you could get six sales easy.  Shoot for the stars and you’ll be a star.”  He’s giving her the double thumbs up and forcing a natural looking smile on his pampered face.  His shoulder-length, dark hair is slicked back with some kind of greasy, hair-stiffening product, a heavy silver chain around his tanned neck, falling to his shaved chest, exposed by his crisp looking white shirt with the raised collar that has the top three buttons un-done.  It looks as though he’s got makeup on his face and he’s always looking at himself in the mirror that takes up the entire back wall of the room.

         “No ah don’t wone staaart no dern business!…an yer a damn liar inyway” The voice in the phone, from Alabama, drawls out at me, then I hear the dial tone for 20 seconds or so, then the line goes blank and I continue drumming on my desk to the shitty hip-hop blasting through the speak above my head, the fools around me still pitching their lines.  I know that Ivan can listen in to anybody’s phone call with the cordless phone that’s usually hanging off the side of his pocket, and I’m looking around for him, or at least the phone, so I can see if he’s listening in on somebody or not…he’s nowhere to be seen…my phone tells me this call has lasted 4 minutes and six seconds…”where’s Ivan” I’m thinking nervously, but then I spot the cordless phone in the middle of the room an on empty desk, and I keep drumming with out a worry.  Lisa, the girl, well, the slow, middle-aged woman, who sits across from me, shoots me a look like she knows what I’m up to, but that’s just fine with me, I know she’ll keep her mouth shut. 

         “Make any sales yet Tyler?” she inquires with a smirk.

         “Nope… I keep getting answering machines today.”

         “Well…you gotta make calls to make sales”, she sarcastically states.

         I see she’s being stubborn, so I casually, as if it wasn’t because of her pushiness, hang up the phone and dial a new number…it’s an answering machine but I pitch the line before it even beeps the first time and hang up, acting frustrated as if they’d just hung up on me.

         “Don’t get upset Tyler” Suzanne, in a soft tone, cuts in.  “It took me three weeks before I even got my first sale…and now look at me!” she gestures towards her trophies, then abruptly loses interest in me, pitching her line to yet another annoyed resident, who promptly hangs up on her with a  sly insult.  ”See…they even hang up on me”—she point’s to herself with feeling—“it’s just part of the job, but you can make some money when you get the hang of it.”

         “Don’t worry about me…I’ve got thick skin, I’m not gonna shoot myself because somebody I don’t even know hung up on me.”

         “Don’t say things like that Tyler, it makes me worry about—“ she looks abruptly away, a strange focus coming into her face—“Hi, Kim? Kim, how are you doing on this fine day?”—she says ‘Kim’ as though she’s known her for years—“My name is Suzanne…and the reason I’m calling today Kim, is because you had shown an interest in generating some extra money from home, and…I was just calling…to help you with that…So Kim…Do you have a few minutes?”—she pauses briefly, listening for their response—“Great!...what we’ve got here…is a—“  Her voice blends in with the murmur of the room, like a single frog’s croak in the softly gurgling night, and I go on with my drumming, watching the seconds on my newest call tick by.

         Suddenly the hip-hop stops and I’m still drumming to the old beat but I hear that Ivan has put on his favorite mix-cd, with Eye of the Tiger starting it off, and he’s turned it way up.  “Here we go!” he shouts over the blaring music, with a loud clap of his hands “Let’s do this!...The bloods flowing now people!”—He claps his hands again—“Let’s go!...get excited!”  Ten seconds or so go by and now Ivan’s romping around, tossing little “five-hour energy” drinks to everyone, throwing one to me, underhand from across the room.  “Drink it like a shot”, he encourages us all, “all of it…all of it at once…don’t leave any in the bottle or it won’t work”, he’s all smiles, but that’s nothing out of the ordinary…he’s always got a fake smile on his face...he doesn’t even have to force it anymore, it just comes of it’s own accord.

         “Ugh…it tastes like cough syrup” I hear Michelle complain across the room.

         “You didn’t like cheap vodka the first time you drank it, did you?”—I jeer at her in a sarcastic, but friendly tone—“or the taste of crack, for that matter.”  She ignores the somewhat rude supplement to my original sarcasm.

         “Tyler you can’t say things like that around here” Suzanne lectures, irritated. “There’s a-lot of people here recovering from things like that…you just tempt them when you say those things.”  I hadn’t thought of that before but it certainly seemed feasible. I didn’t mention crack again.

         “Are you ready to rock!” Brad demands of Michelle.

         “I’m ready to roll baby!”

         Now the theme to Rocky is going, not Eye of the Tiger, the other one, and Ivan’s humming “da, da, da….da, da, da”, nodding his head to the beat.  “Let’s go…next deal get’s 20 bones!...Let’s go!”—another enthusiastic clap—“I’m ’a close somebody…I’m pumped now!”—he’s moving his shoulders like a boxer in training—“you like that 5 hour, huh” he says with a cocky, sideways smirk.

         What zeal this Ivan seems to speak with…the worst thing about it is that I know it’s all a show; the forced smile, the strained enthusiasm; the overfriendly attitude; the encouraging one-liners; his whole fucking personality.  He probably goes back to his office intermittently, throughout the day, and weeps, his tears streaking through his makeup (makeup that he thinks goes un-noticed), as he turns a loaded revolver over in his hands.  Actually, with him, it’s probably more like a loaded glock…much more stylish.  He’s all about style.  How can he come into work everyday, living such a lie the whole time he’s here, just to sell some forsaken business to unsuspecting, broke, middle-aged couples, and slow-witted, easily-conquested, retirees, stealing their money while helping some massive bank conglomerate profit on their loss—sickening, the whole affair—the whole job.