No One Calls Me Anymore . . .

[KathyK]

Hi All, 

Just some responses...

Jen Reese:

>I'm with you on this one, Kathy! I've had numerous *interesting*
jobs to pay the bills, but the most boring by far was the "envelope
opener". I opened envelopes with insurance claims for 8 loooong
hours, and I do mean a full 8 hours. We got exactly 1 hour for lunch
and you had to punch in at 8AM and leave at 5 PM, no exceptions. If I
remember correctly they started docking pay.<

Eek!  Envelope opener?  A bit tedious, was it?  My favorite but also 
most boring job was an internship I did at a museum last summer.  I 
loved it there.  It's such a cool place.  

I was chosen to organize the print collection.  While it was quite 
interesting to see how the museum changed over time, it did get a 
little painful hunched over these photos, straining to determine if 
this was really the northeast parlor and if so, when did it look 
like this?  Plus I sat alone in the library with very few people to 
talk to, which also gave me a headache.  But I was able to get out 
every so often because I researched Barnabas Deane.  Never heard of 
him?  Not surprising.  Ever hear of his big brother, Silas Deane?  
Most folks here in Connecticut just know him by his highway :-) 

Cindy:

>Wow! Kathy can ignore a ringing telephone! She must be made of
*granite!* ;-)

For me, an unanswered phone is right up there with an alarm clock no
one will turn off. Makes me homicidal, it does.<

See, but this ability is not always a good thing.  I am also much 
too good at ignoring my alarm clock <g>   

Susan:

>Well, let me help you understand...<grin>. One day, I received a
call from a telemarketer. She started talking and I politely said,"I
am not interested." She kept talking. I more forcefully said' "I
said I am not interested." She started getting rude with her
speaking so I hung up on her. She then called back and when I
answered simply said, "BI*CH!".<

Susan, I don't know what to say.  That woman offends me both as a 
consumer and as someone working in customer service.  And it reminds 
me that I get irritated when the clerk at the grocery store doesn't 
even say "hi" to me when I greet her and smile, which I invariably 
do.  I can't even imagine how angry I'd be to be treated like that 
by someone who called *me.*  

Sandy:

>So, picking pockets is okay? Forgery? Credit card fraud?<

Well gee whiz, I suppose I deserve that response since I didn't 
qualify my definition of real job as anything *legal* that helps pay 
the bills.

>As for customer service--I have done it for twenty years in several
capacities and several cities around the country. People on both
sides of the counter deserve courtesy. However--telemarketers in no
way provide customer service; one must first be a customer in order
to be "served." And a great many telemarketers go through extensive
training in manipulative sales techniques. The schemes are predatory,
in more ways than one.

Further, as someone who was burgled before and after leaving the
nest, I'm tellin' ya, it was real different. So I have to wonder if
your attitude might be different if it were not your parents' home
being invaded via telephone by all manner of uninvited flim-flam
agents, but your own. There's a reason we now have a national no-call
list, you know.<

Well, here is where I have to reiterate that I find nearly all phone 
calls to be intrusive.  Telemarketers are no different than any 
other call that interrupts me while I'm at home.  And actually I 
look forward to when all the calls are my very own and I can ignore 
them to my heart's content without constant shouts of, "Can you get 
that?  I'm busy."  

I do understand why there's a Do Not Call list.  Telemarketers are 
an annoyance and obviously a huge problem for many people.  All I 
was trying to get at is that it's not necessary to take out one's 
irritation on the actual person who does the calling.  They're just 
trying to make a living, no matter what manipulative techniques 
they've learned.  Very few, I'm sure are sitting on the other side 
of the telephone line twisting their mustaches creating ways to 
screw people out of money.  That's for people who get paid more than 
they do.

Cindy:

>I don't want to put words in Sandy's mouth, but I suspect "Go get a
*real* job!" just meant something akin to "Can you please go make
widgets or do something -- anything -- that adds more value to
society than just bothering people who don't want to talk to you?"
That's how I read it, anyway! :-D<

Sandy:

>Absolutely! What I really wanted to say was, "Excuse me, but I find
myself inspired to recommend a change in your vocation to something
which might involve the manufacture and/or provision of goods and/or
services to/for some population which is desirous and/or requiring of
same." But all I had time for was four or five words with most of the
real bulldog type sales callers. Ergo, distillate of sentiment
into: "Go get a real job!"<

Until there are enough productive jobs to go around that add value 
to society, there will be people working in these evidently wasteful 
and useless positions.  And because they do allow people who may not 
otherwise have a job to be able to make some money, they are 
therefore not without value to an individual nor are they without 
value to our society, which values people who work over those who 
stand around and say, "Nope sorry, I can't work there.  It's beneath 
me."  

Sandy, I see your point about how invasive it is and how it forces 
the people answering the phone into making a decision in which 
neither choice is particularly desirable (buying things you don't 
need or rejecting a fellow human being).  However, events in my life 
and in the lives of those around me have led me to have a different 
perspective on the "real job" issue.  

And I have grappled with my own principles recently regarding the 
place I just started working at.  I don't like big companies.  Never 
have.  I don't like the telephone.  The thought of working at the 
same company as my mother still makes me shudder.  So how did I end 
up taking catalog orders from rich people?  Because I need the job.  
I need the money in order to do what I feel I have to with my life.  
So I stand by my definition of "real job."

KathyK (who has to "upsell" items in every order but is not allowed 
to go any further after the customer says, "no," the first time, 
which is just fine)