Sorry, I disagree.

They’ve already broken the social contract by calling me unbidden at my residence; often during a meal.

No mercy can possibly be expected from me.

If the people working at the telemarketing firm feel bad, perhaps they should look for another job. If enough people feel this way, maybe (oh boy this is a stretch) the telemarketers will be less ubiquitous.

The nicest thing you can do to a telemarketer is to say “no thank you” and hang up the phone as soon as you know you are not interested. That way you don’t have to get worked up and they can move on to someone who may actually be interested in the product. Often times they are not allowed to hang up on a customer. They get written up for ending a call if you are still talking to them, even if it obvious that you don’t want what they are selling.

It is really easy to forget you are dealing with a real human being when you don’t see the face. Telemarketers deserve to be treated with the same courtesy you would extend to anyone else.

Sometimes, though, depending on my mood, I engage them. I ask them where they’re from, if they’re students working their way through college, what their major is, how is the weather. And we get to be friends, and they are nice when I say, “no, thanks.”

We have a company here in Cedar that employs a lot of kids who are going to college, so I feel for them.

This is off the subject, but the other day, I was calling Direct TV because my DVR wasn’t working and I got transferred to several different people when finally I got this guy from Utah. He kept going on about the snow problems and I argued him that we didn’t have that much snow and finally, I snapped, “could we table this argument over the weather and go on to the next step?” And he said, “well, we are both from Utah, I think we can be nice to each other?”

And I just repeated what I said until he dropped the topic of weather and told me how to fix the DVR. It’s called parroting and it’s quite effective.

But to your other question: this brought to mind something that I did about a month ago. I paid for a one-year subscription to a web-based service that is interesting and potentially useful. I haven’t used it once since. I’m past the refund period, so the money is gone. Might as well have flushed it away.

I ordered the Sunday only paper and it comes everday and I have to deal with it. Maybe I should deliver it to their door. I bet I would be arrested for littering.

On the telephone calls, there is no law that says you must answer the phone. I have cable and it tells me who is calling on my TV so I have the ringer turned down real low.

There must be a lot of people who buy those crusies or the company would quit selling them.

It’s not a good deal if you have 3 weeks worth of newspapers still rolled up with the elastic around it in the bin.

I don’t care how good it is to be an employee there.
Telemarketing firms are fairly scum-ridden.
If you choose to work for one of these companies, be prepared to take both barrels of my angst.