Tyrantasaurus, is on to you
It’s been a while, ironically, since anything has gotten my blood boiling like what happened today. In my non-Rantasaurus time I work at a restaurant, I work in the kitchen and I answer the phone. It’s great. However, I have to deal with telemarketers who call small businesses. I’ve been on the telemarketing end… my first job out of college was selling web hosting over the phone. However… either from the caller’s perspective or the answerer’s, I’ve never seen something like this happen.
I answer the phone and someone says: “I’m looking for Thomas, I’m his financial advisor.”
The area code is one I don’t recognize and, even worse, while ‘Thomas’ is the restaurant owner’s given name, he goes by his middle name, at least to everyone that matters. I try to respond when the man interrupts himself.
“Actually, let me just have your fax number,” and then, “on second thought, can I speak to Thomas?”
This stinks like a sales call so I tell him that ‘Thomas’ is not available. After several seconds of dead air, I hang up.
The asshole calls me back.
“What’s your name?” he fumes into the phone. I tell him. “Actually, I want you to know why I’m really calling. This isn’t a sales call. Actually,” he’s breathing heavily, “Thomas hired us to call you because he’s had complaints of rudeness on the phone. We’ve just confirmed it. This phone call is being recorded and you’re as good as fired. I’m telling Thomas that you hung up on me tomorrow!”
“Uh-huh,” I say.
“Good luck, honey,” he says, hanging up himself.
Now, ‘Thomas’ was actually right there. It didn’t take long to confirm with him that he hadn’t actually hired a rudeness inspector. My guess is that the guy was having a bad day and didn’t want to hear another sales call go bad. So he actually called back and took it out on me.
My piece of advice? Don’t stutter like a freak when you’re telemarketing and, actually, don’t telemarket at all. It’s the worst job in the world.
I thought people who worked on the phone were supposed to know how to use one.
Rantasaurus Says: I spent three years telemarketing. I’ve got a great phone voice but… *sniff* a face only a mothersaurus could love.
I second the not working for telemarketing. I worked at a telemarketing firm for all of two days. Everyone was frighteningly chipper, and they expected you to come in and make sales on your first day with no training. That and I couldn’t stand people screaming at me and calling me every dirty name in the book on the phone. I put down my headset in the middle of the second day and walked out.
I’ve experienced a telemarketer cracking one time. The woman called me back and screamed at me about how lousy her job was. I also had a boss one time that would make up flamboyant stories to torment the telemarketers as well…probably one of the reasons that one lady cracked that day. LOL!
Bwaaa “rudeness inspector” — fabulous.