Don't yank my chain, asshole

[OfficeSlug]

My job as the receptionist *IS* to filter what gets through to our two owners.

So yes, I will grill the caller to find out exactly what they want.


We get a lot of unsolicited calls ("Do you want to increase your visibility using Google?" "We can improve your website!" "Do you want a new contract for your copier!?" Sh*t like that, that the bosses DO NOT WANT TO DEAL WITH - and boy, do they let me know it.)


Sorry, true fact.

[Sapphire Silk]

My favorite is when a sales person gets through to me. In government service no manager has even an iota of purchasing power, and all sales pitches have to be sumitted as a bid to the appropriate authority. It is actually funny when they try because the more experienced sales persons know not to call, so we know it is someone who did not do his homework or someone who is having a prank pulled on them.

I have ZERO purchasing power as faculty, but that doesn't stop the sales reps with the publishing companies from trying to sell me on books. And it is an effective strategy on their part, because often the faculty does see something they like and want to adopt it for their class . . . but we have to go through the textbook committee first.

Even though I don't have purchasing power, because I'm the only one who teaches OB, I pretty much get to decide what textbook I use.

It may make the jobs of people in phone-sales harder, but then again, if they don't want phone solicitation, then it is unlikely that they are going to be more receptive to a sales pitch after being told the call was for something else.

And yet Shadowball's company continues this practice precisely because it brings in sales from some enough people to make it worthwhile.

[ShadowBall]

Blah, we recently got told we aren't allowed to accept, "the corporate office handles that" as an "excuse." Even if people at wherever we call have zero purchasing authority in their company, we still must push our shit on them. And sometimes it's not even the highest authority in the business we speak to - sometimes it's a manager or assistant manager. As long as it's not a rep, a secretary, an operator or an admin assistant, we can sell to them.

And I'm sure that goes over well when the company gets sent to collections over a bill for shit they don't even remember ordering. I don't know if my company just sucks a lot or if this is normal as far as cold-calling jobs, but I almost wish I could send an apology to every single person who agrees to one of these damn sales because I know about 9 out of every 10 is going to have an issue canceling the damn thing.

[EricKei]

It's fairly standard practice for companies that routinely do cold-calling. It's nothing bad against you ^_^

As with many of us, it's simply a case of having a job where you/we don't really like how they do business...but the alternative is not having a job, so...x_x

[Kogarashi]

Yeah, sounds like a job to get out of asap, if you ask me. Them's shady business practices.

At least the online schooling calls were supposedly asked-for by the contactees, and the practices for removing names from the calling list easier. We also weren't told to outright lie, just dodge the issue due to sensitivity (something about embarrassing the potential customers, or causing grief if we were calling them at work and their boss found out they were going back to school). Like I said, the calls themselves weren't so bad, it was the crazy managers who drove me over the edge.

Of course, considering your call center's current practices with sales, I doubt they'll be as "nice" about it as my call center was.

[ShadowBall]

Ohh trust me, I know them's shady business practices. I loved how pissed my boss got when she found out I believed the company was a scam. According to her, since the company has been around for years and years and selling that whole time, it's not a scam. Well the Nigerian email scam has been around for years and years too and there are suckers who fall for that as well.

Pushing shit on someone will not make them want to buy it. Lying to someone will not make them want to buy your shit. Being an asshole will not make people want to buy.

And yeah, like many folks, I am not at this job because I want to be. I am not passionate about being a cold-caller like my boss says I have to. I have this job so I can have money. It's not a career to me (which they do describe their sales rep positions as "careers"). But the alternative is having no money. Le sigh.

[MadMike]

I don't know if my company just sucks a lot or if this is normal as far as cold-calling jobs, but I almost wish I could send an apology to every single person who agrees to one of these damn sales because I know about 9 out of every 10 is going to have an issue canceling the damn thing.

I never worked in this industry myself, so I don't have any personal insight. I'm not much of a people person (although if you manage to become my friend I'm the nicest guy you could ever want to know), and I don't deal well with confrontation. I think the first time I inevitably got screamed at, they'd find me curled up into a weeping ball under my desk, or beating the hell out of the equipment.

I did, however, used to be a member of a now-defunct message board, that dealt with ways of dealing with telemarketers. Some of it was pranks to play on the caller, and some of it was practical advise, like what your rights were, what the telemarketers were and were not allowed to do, and how to sue them if they refused to stop calling you after you said the magic words, "Please put me on your do not call list." The guy running it was a guy named Tom Mabe, who recorded some of the calls where he'd prank the telemarketers who called him. Some of them were hilarious, but there were a few where I think he just went over the line.

Unfortunately, the board was completely and totall unmoderated. It was a very simplistic design where all you had to do was fill in your name and your comment. There were no password-protected logins, so there was nothing to stop people from pretending to be someone else. We had a few telemarketers with a chip on their shoulder trying to start trouble, which was to be expected, but we also had people flooding the board with nonsensical crap. Some of these people actually bragged about intentionally harassing the people they called, and I'm not even talking about retalition for playing games. I'm talking about where the person they called politely said they weren't interested, and the caller would put them back into the call list, or call them repeatedly to harass them. A few of us regulars begged the owner to appoint moderators, and even offered to moderate the board ourselves, but he wasn't interested. He ended up simply pulling the plug on the whole thing.

I made a few friends while the board was up and running, some of which I still talk to today, even though the board died around 2002 or so. While we got quite a few irate telemarketers, some of them eventually saw where we were coming from and actually became pretty decent members. One of the regulars on there was actually a telemarketer from the beginning, working for AOL, but he understood why we had a problem with it. He hated his job, but hey, we all need an income. But he did bend the rules a bit, like pulling people off the list if it was obvious they weren't interested, even if they didn't use the exact phrase.

OK, I rambled quite a bit, but some of the former and current telemarketers, especially the one I was just talking about, gave us quite a bit of insight on just how sleazy some of these companies can be, even the legit ones. He'd vent to us about how his boss was constantly pushing him to do things that were certainly unethical, and just barely on this side of legal, to get sales. The final straw was when he accepted a "no" from the person he called, because she was concerned about what their kids might get into on the internet. His boss gave him hell about that, and told him he should have mentioned the parental controls to her. He told his boss he didn't, because they didn't work. His boss's response was, "I know that, but you didn't have to tell her that!" That was it for him, he quit on the spot after that exchange.

[Seshat]

I don't know if my company just sucks a lot or if this is normal as far as cold-calling jobs, but I almost wish I could send an apology to every single person who agrees to one of these damn sales because I know about 9 out of every 10 is going to have an issue canceling the damn thing.

Your company sucks a lot. This may also be normal for cold-calling jobs, but whether it is or not, the company sucks.

Soon as you can get a new job, get the hell out of there. Your sanity will thank you.