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PAST
MERIDIAN
Lionel Fisher
________
Have
You Been Nice to a Telemarketer Today?
I don’t mind being interrupted occasionally by telemarketers occasionally. But then I’m a writer who works from home and welcomes every opportunity to quit staring at the computer screen while blood drips from my furrowed brow. I always try to be pleasant. And I don’t hang up on them because I don’t like to be rude. Feeling mean-spirited isn’t worth the few seconds I might save myself. And, frankly, I don’t consider my time all that precious. So what I do, instead, is ask a few questions of my own. And what usually happens is the telemarketer hangs up on me. I feel better that way. People from banks call a lot, and I sometimes butt in to ask, “Aren’t you the folks who’re giving money away? Didn’t I read somewhere that your profits are so huge you’re actually calling customers to share some of it. Hey, would you put me down for…” Click. Or I might break in to ask, “Is that a Tennessee or Texas accent you have? I just love a Southern drawl, worked in Miami back in the ‘80s with an account exec from North Carolina who was married to a college diving coach…” Click. Besides, a telemarketer saved my bacon once. It happened on a weekday morning a few years ago. The man was selling a product to put into septic-tank systems. “For the prevention of costly drain field repairs,” he explained. “I’ve owned this house nearly six years,” I told him. “I haven’t had any problems yet.” “Well, if you use our product, you never will,” he replied confidently. What I don’t know about septic tanks would fill one, so I was at a loss for words. I finally asked him, “Is that the same stuff they sprinkle on lawns to keep lions and tigers away?” The man didn’t answer. I asked, “Don’t the two products work on the same principle -- that you’ll never know if they really do protect you from septic-tank gremlins or lions and tigers, but it’s better to be safe than sorry?” Click. My curiosity aroused, before going back to bleed on my keyboard, I called the only septic tank service company in town and asked the woman who answered if what the telemarketer tried to sell me was any good. She laughed. “Well, if you really want to spend your money,” she said, “we carry a product that’ll cost you much less.” She then asked me when I’d had my septic tank pumped last. Long story short, I was long overdue. Turned out, too, there were just a few inches to spare before the vile contents began spilling out of the tank into my house because the electrical box powering the pump inside the tank had rusted out. By calling, the telemarketer had prodded me into avoiding those pricey drain field repairs he’d mentioned. That’s one reason I haven’t logged onto www.donotcall.gov and typed in my phone number. Another is an e-zine article I came across, written by a telemarketer named Carol Roach, which impressed me enough to download the piece. In it she asked, “So who are telemarketers anyway?” “We are young people with no skills getting our first job,” Roach went on to point out. “We are older women returning to the work force after 20 odd years as a stay-at-home mom. We are single parents needing to juggle raising our children around working outside of the home. We are wives or husbands who desperately need to make that second income to support our families. “We are students who supplement our income or pay our way through school by working. We are university graduates who have not been able to acquire our first job in our fields. We are older people who have had wonderful careers and have now found ourselves out of work because we are too old, the company downsized or went out of business. We are visible minorities who have been faced with discrimination on the job market all of our lives.” Didn’t leave many of us out, did she? “Telemarketers are, in fact, decent people like everyone else just trying to make a living” Roach concluded. So the main reason I haven’t listed my number with the National Do Not Call Registry is that I’ve always admired a distinctly American trait: Our willingness to give people another chance. And if everyone deserves a second or third opportunity to succeed, why not a first?
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