Thursday Thirteen #28

1. When they say it will only take a minute of your time it never is. I wouldn’t mind but they’ll never give me an address for me to send my bill.
2. 99% are a waste of my time and the company paying for its time. I don’t need new double-glazing tested to withstand the long artic winter.
3. When they pretend to be calling on behalf of a company you actually deal with for something important but can’t tell you which one or my name. The law has two words for that – False Pretences. I also have two words for it but I’m too polite to say them here.
4. That they call at times their statistical models say they will catch me and make a sale. Otherwise known as dinnertime and when I’m in the shower.
5. When you ask them nicely to go away they’ve been told they have to keep trying. They’ve been taught we are too polite to hang up. I’m not too polite I apologise and do it anyway then I feel bad because I’ve been rude and that makes me angry for about five minutes. Then I think why am I the one who is angry and hope their boss has an accident at a demonstration of stone cladding double glazing and ends up with an attractive new look.
6. That an over-paid marketing executive is so uncreative; so burnt out; and so lacking in ideas at their job that they think this is the best way to make me like their brand and buy their mythril framed double-glazing. If you can’t come up with a better strategy why not get work doing something you’re good at. Something honest. Like robbing banks.
7. I’m signed up to the Telephone Preference Service (UK) so the ones that call me are they’re ignoring that. Basically I only get the really unethical cold callers with the cheapest scripts, Dickensian sweatshop conditions and the staff who’ve already taken the most stick.
8. They have to have my number either from a company I’ve given it to for some important reason or be using hardware that calls banks of numbers. One is a breach of trust the other is an abuse of the phone system. At least when you get an obscene call your not the only one getting abused*
9. Friends use answer phones to screen calls for cold callers and I hate speaking to answer phones. The beep makes me a gibbering idiot. I can’t put words together in the right order. I’m more coherent speaking to an attractive woman than an answer phone. The only worse thing is an attractive woman’s answer phone.
10. Sometime I get more cold calls in a month when I’m in than I get calls from people I know. Make your own punch line up for that one.
11. When the phone rings and you’re expecting a call you get a bit excited. A bit like a small child, maybe it’s an attractive woman calling, but no it’s a cold call to sell me raspberry ripple flavoured double glazing.
12. A section of the most talented and well educated part of many developing countries population is sat around trying to sell me antique style double glazing because it’s cheaper to employ them than to come up with a smart targeted way of selling me double glazing for my car. The only experience of westerners workers in foreign call centres get is from cold calling. We hate their calls and they think we’re rude, obnoxious, angry bores who need double glazing. . That’s great form of cultural exchange.
13. That’s a great message to send when one of those workers is the leader of their nation in twenty years. One day one of them may have nuclear launch codes.

* This joke was "acquired" from Margaret Smith

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