I am NOT a telemarketer

[smileyeagle1021]

As a refresher course for my hearing bretheren.
The correct answer to "This is (company) interpreter (#) assisting a deaf or hard of hearing person placing a phone call, are you familiar with how a relay call works" is one of two things.
1. Yes, I'm familiar, please connect the caller (or some variant there of)
2. No, please explain how that works.

These are NOT correct answers.
-we are on the Do Not Call List, do not call us.
-not interested
-*click*
-*mashing buttons*
-saying "fucking telemarketers" and hanging up.

I'm sorry, that is willful ignorance. I can understand people not knowing what a relay call is, I can understand people not understanding the system... but I can tell you what your reaction should be (because it was mine the first time I took one at the old call center).
"Oh, I've never heard of that before... I wondered how deaf people communicated with the hearing world... explain this to me"
Any other reaction is willful ignorance at best... nothing in my spiel indicates I am doing anything other than what I am doing, assisting someone who is deaf.

[jackfaire]

Uhm yeah even I my first day in a call center knew to ask no what is it.

[fireheart]

the sheer stupidity is mind-boggling.

Even I know how a relay call system works and I don't have any deaf friends.

[bainsidhe]

I'm a bit curious, how often do you encounter this each day?

[Dave1982]

Pardon me for playing devil's advocate, but I can sort of see where they are coming from. I don't know how you sound when you give your standard spiel, but if it comes off as robotic in any way, I can see people leaping to the conclusion that it's a telemarketer without actually listening you what you said.

That doesn't make it right, of course. I get this sort of thing when I ask customers "What can I help you find" and they say "Good, how are you?" But I've done the same thing myself, and can see it happening with a relay call.

[klhanson]

I say it again.. i love my job.. I work for a company that does something similar to relay but its so much better.. we just listen to what one person says repeat it into a voice to text program and it goes to the other person as text.. we dont have to worry about all the crap that you do! lol

[NightWatch]

New job? That's awesome! Lots of deaf people call the police, maybe I'll hear from you one of these days.
I do have to vent about one frustration I have about the relay service though, I absolutely HATE being completely unable to talk to the interpreter. Because there are 2 questions I have ever had. 1) What happened to the caller? The caller stopped communicating, and the lady wouldn't even tell me if she had hung up or simply stopped communicating. She just kept repeating, "you may not speak to the interpreter" I freaking know I'm not supposed to, but the caller hasn't said shit in a full 5 minutes and her f***ing house is being broken into, I need to know what's happening!!!!
2) Can you repeat that? See, When you're mumbling and I have a thousand things going on at once in this office, it's not the deaf person's fault that I didn't hear you, it's yours, for fucks sake, just repeat what you told me. And if you absolutely must ask the deaf person to repeat themselves, so be it, but don't keep repeating the mantra "you may not speak to the interpretter.

I think the lady I was speaking to was super thickheaded because even when I started asking questions of the caller, she kept saying the same thing. I snapped and told her, "I know that I am not to speak to you, interpreter, I am asking the caller questions. Would you mind doing your job and translating to her?"

Thanks for letting me vent Smiley But yes, the people who hang up on you guys are effing retarded.

Teehee, I totally know where you work. *dances*

[Chanlin]

Working in call centers I've taken these kinds of calls, especially at my current job for a cell phone service. Its pretty simple once you get used to it.

In my ASL classes for ASL 1 and 2 my instructor was a woman who is Deaf (that is Deaf with a capital D for those who know the significance). In any case she talked to us about how frustrating it is that the hearing world is so ignorant of the way Deaf (deaf) people can communicate with the world.

I don't get why people don't listen to such things when they do get called. It's fairly clear you are not a telemarketer if people would just listen to what you say.

[JoitheArtist]

I used to get the occasional relay call when I worked in the call center here. It was annoying, in one sense, because the calls just take a long time. But the ladies on the other end of the relay were almost always real sweethearts.

[roguesqd]

when I worked in a call center I hated the do not talk to the operator line, it was soooo annoying

[jackfaire]

My favorite relay call was one where they were on a video phone and the relay could tell me everything they were doing even when the person "talking" changed

[trailerparkmedic]

My favorite relay call was one where they were on a video phone and the relay could tell me everything they were doing even when the person "talking" changed

I only got two of those calls when I worked at the call center, but I loved them. Normally I hated relay calls because they would mess up my talk time, and I had to talk much, much slower than normal (I normally talk pretty fast). The "go ahead" and long pauses threw me off and I could never save those accounts. The visual calls were great because the interpreter could go as fast as me, which made it feel more like a conversation.

[smileyeagle1021]

For those who complain about how slow it is, you would love my company, we have tried to speed up the calls some by doing away with Go Ahead (we tell the deaf user not to press send until they want us to start speaking, because we start talking as soon as the message appear on our screen, we read it) Then hearing users are told to reply as soon as we are finished speaking and we press send at the end of each sentence. So we keep it going at a decent speed (well, still dependent on the typing speed of the deaf user, but at least we reduce operator delay).
And Nightwatch, that is bad work on the relay operator's part... we are allowed to tell the caller whether the connected was a soft loss (connection went inactive), hard loss (signal lost all together) or disconnected at caller's request (for emergency calls... standard person to person is different). Oh, is it true that you actually get a lot of noise complaints from deaf people (that's what the other relay operators here have said... I think they may be trying to pull my leg though).

Oh, and I try not to sound robotic in the least... of course after a full shift when it gets later at night... yeah, not sounding cheery and perky anymore.