Kelly is a mother, runner, writer, designer and serial entrepreneur. She is also a reformed over-committer and believes that a busy life need not be a stressful life. She blogs about all this and more at A Life Less Frantic.
The most irritating call to answer
By
No comments
Telemarketing? Does it still actually work?
Judging by the number of phone calls I get each day now that I am working at home, it does. Otherwise companies wouldn’t be indulging in this most repulsive of marketing activities would they?
I find it utterly reprehensible that in this day and age of already limited privacy, someone can call me on a number that most close friends of mine don’t even have, interrupt me (usually during those marvellously fun hours between 5 and 7pm) and then demand my attention so they can sell me something I don’t need. Or pour guilt on me to donate to their desperately-in-need charity.
What exactly is it that I find so violating about this practice? Well apart from the fact that I am receiving unsolicited calls IN THE PRIVACY OF MY OWN HOME, it is the fact that I am obliged to be polite to someone who I simply don’t want to speak to.
I hate being obliged to do anything.
I hate when someone washes my windscreens at the traffic lights because now I am obliged to root around in my purse for some small change to pay for something I DIDN’T ASK FOR.
I hate being obliged to once again root around in my purse while at the shopping centre simply because someone elderly has approached me with a mournful look and shaken a tin in my direction.
I hate being obliged to say a polite ‘no thank you’ to the person trying to get me to sample her perfume.
I hate being obliged to do anything because if and when I say ‘no, thank you’, I feel guilty. Guilty at depriving someone down on their luck of a few dollars. Guilty for telling an elderly person I don’t want to donate to their charity. Guilty because I am preventing someone from being able to do their job.
And this guilt makes me feel mad because that’s exactly why all these things work.
People who live in polite society feel guilty if they are rude. That’s why we pay the windscreen washers at the lights. That’s why we donate to people shaking a tin at us. And that’s why we answer the phone and engage in polite conversation with awfully persistent people who we simply don’t want to speak to. And it’s why we’ll donate to their damn charity or agree to get an info pack sent out to us … just so we can get them off the phone without hanging up rudely on them.
Well I am done with that. From now on, if you’re a telemarketer and you call my house, I will hang up immediately on you. Sorry, I know it’s rude and you’re just trying to do your job but my home is my sanctuary and you are violating it.
I refuse to be guilted into talking to you people anymore!
(Oh and yes, I am going to get myself on the blessed Do Not Call register that I thought I was on but apparently I am not!)
