One of the most telling aspects of modern life is when you sit down together to enjoy a nice dinner at the end of the day only to be interrupted by a telemarketer trying to sell you feminine deodorant products. Or asking you if you know that the country is under attack from the far other political side, and only a check to them will help them stem the tide. Annoying as these intrusions are, there is only one thing worse than getting one of these calls at dinnertime; that's being the person making the calls.
Telemarketing ranks one rung away from sewer worker on the ladder of successful career options. One rung below.
When I worked a short time for a telemarketing firm we sold three products; a diet shake, a discount airline plan and male enhancement products. You could lose weight in one area, gain it back in a different area, then head out to parts unknown.
The shake was probably the most reasonable of the products. A couple of the girls who worked with me were drinking the shake two times a day. They said they lost some weight, but I just don't think they were looking hard enough. I tried the shake once; it tasted like banana flavored Elmer's glue. And that was the chocolate one. It helped you lose weight because you couldn't eat anything for several hours while the glue dried in your stomach.
The travel plan did give some some very hefty discounts, if you could fulfill three basic criteria; 1) You could leave at a moment's notice. 2) You didn't mind riding in the cargo hold. 3) You didn't particularly care where you were going. The travel company for whom we were trying to sell this package could very honestly promise 50-80% savings. It's just that it only applied to planes flying over Iowa while dusting the fields. There was a nice satisfaction guarantee; if you were unsatisfied with the travel package the company would cheerfully not care.
As for the male enhancement “package” we didn't have to call people for that. People would see one of those commercials where beautiful women are hanging all over Joe Average and talking about how different life is these days in Big Guy country. They would call us. The product was billed as “all natural.” Stupidity is all natural too, and it helped to have a generous dose if you were going to purchase this product. It was made from a special secret mixture of herbs and vitamins that would make women think they were dating an elephant. Dumbo to be exact. KFC is also made from a secret batch of herbs and spices but I don't think it's going to help me grow feathers. But that's essentially what we were promising people. Some of the guys who worked at our call center were trying it out, but I didn't notice any of them needing an extra cubicle.
I knew this job would be trouble my very first day when my trainer turned out to be a young woman whose arms were covered with tattoos and who had a pierced nipple. I know she had one because she asked once while we were working if I wanted to see it. It's not often you get a chance to see something for free that people pay good money for at the State Fair, but I respectfully declined. I hadn't eaten lunch yet and I didn't want anything to interfere with that.
Another woman I had the pleasure to work next to was kind of attractive, in a stripper sort of way. Listening to these two dolls sell male enhancement products was like listening in on the extension to a phone sex session. I'm guessing the guys on the other end of the line weren't having enhancement problems at the time.
It was pretty sad really, because the guys who call in for this stuff are coming up short in more ways than one. They were calling for a physical enhancement when what they desperately needed was a personality enhancement. But what was really sad was when their girlfriends called in for them. If your girlfriend is calling a hotline to buy a bigger bridge to the love canal I'm guessing you are having some security issues, not to mention having the self-esteem of Rodney Dangerfield. “How long does it take before you can see some difference?” they'd want to know. I would try to explain to them that it's not like a Chia pet, you can't water it and watch it grow. It takes time for nature to kick in. Whenever one of these sweethearts would call in I'd ask her; “Do you know that a dwarf apple tree can actually produce better fruit than the biggest stud tree in the orchard?” I'd be stuck when they'd reply; “I don't want no tree where I can pick the fruit myself.” Before the analogies got any further off-base I'd helpfully ask to speak directly to her lesser half. I'd try to convince him that he would be better off with our travel plan to parts unknown instead.
Anyway, the next time you get one of those annoying calls at dinner time just remember; be polite when you tell them you're not interested. They've got issues of their own.
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