Adam Walters
Professor Parbst
ENG 531
4 April 2013
Cold Call
“Hello Mr. Watts, my name is Paul R. I’m calling with your local internet provider; and we’re providing a limited time deal for interested customers like yourself who are looking for a faster, more reliable, and cheaper option for their internet service.”
With a quick, “Not interested,” Mr. Watts hung up on Marcus.
With a few mouse clicks his computer was calling up the next number on his contacts list. There was no time for breaks after getting yelled at by the strangers he called, no time to even think about lunch, and everything had to be focused on sales. Sale the product, get the paycheck, survive another week. Most people that worked at the center stayed around to make three checks and then were out the door to a better job that didn’t drive them insane. To keep his sanity, and his job that gave him a paycheck, Marcus had started to use fake names when talking to people. Paul R(evere) didn’t seem to be doing that well at sales, so he went back to trying out a few others to see how well they’d do at selling internet services.
Steve J, Walt D, Teddy R, and even Jesus C. (with a spanish accent so it wasn’t too obvious) all failed to grab the attention of strangers getting interrupted while watching the five o'clock news and getting ready for dinner. Marcus tried different accents with generic names. He worked through a lisp, a southern drawl, a spanish accent, and even dared to use his rough asian accent, and every single person clicked the line, and most of them didn’t even wait for him to finish his first sentence.
Another name popped up on his screen, the tone buzzed in his headset that the number was being dialed, and Marcus was faced with another call to meet the quota. 10 calls an hour was acceptable, but only if you had a few sales. 15 an hour meant he was doing well but sort of slacking, and 20 an hour was typical and expected by Andrea, his boss. Ms. Winchester was just another number that he had to call so that he could have a paycheck.
“Hello Ms. Winchester, my name is Albert E. I’m calling with your local internet provider; and we’re providing a limited time deal for interested customers like yourself who are looking for a faster, more reliable, and cheaper option for their internet service.”
“Einy!? They got you too?” Ms. Winchester muffled a small sob. “Albert, you were doing relatively so well, and now? This? I always knew you shouldn’t be hanging out with Oppenheimer. Just look at what he’s done to your life.”
This was nothing new for Marcus. Doing cold calls is the social equivalent of living in the sewers. Everyone knows you can be rude to a telemarketer. Everyone. Marcus did what any jaded ‘customer service representative’ learned how to do after the first few days of being on the phones, not pay attention. “Yes m’am, and this week we are offering up to a 30% rate reduction for a wireless router and six month contract, this has been able to save some customers up to thirty dollars a month.”
“Okay, listen closely. If you are being held against your will I need you to clear your throat. If your captors might be listening, just give me something, because I will help you Einy. Modern slavery is no joke!”
“Ma’m would you be interested in this program or not?” If ignoring the problem wasn’t an option, being direct usually did the trick.
“Whoa! Hold on there Einy. Sorry, I was just joking. I thought you were playing around with your name, no need to get rude. Having a rough day are we?”
Normally Marcus would have moved the conversation back to the sale. If there was one thing that Andrea knew, it was how to chant ‘always be closing’ at every meeting or conversation that she had with Marcus or anyone that worked at the center. He was pretty sure that it was the only thing that she had learned when she opened up one book twenty years ago about how to sale. “Rough year more like it.”
“Girl trouble?”
If only it could be just a girl that made him have a rough moment. A girl, and any of the problems that she could cause, even the craziest of girls, would have been prefered. “All of life trouble.”
“Ouch. Managing to keep your head above water at least?”
“Barely.” Marcus took a breath thinking about everything that had been thrown his way in the past year, the bills that were starting to pile up, and just how little sleep he’d been able to get with trying to work two and a half jobs. “I’m alive, so I’ve got that going for me.”
“That’s your version of a good day? Being able to eat and breath is what makes your day?”
“When your health is the best you’ve got, you’re happy to have it.”
“Oh, give me a break Einy, there has to be something out there that you’ve got going for you. You’ve got a job at least, right? And you’re talking to me. Trust me, I don’t let chumps talk to me, so you’ve got that one too.”
“Jobs aren’t hard to get, I’ve got them by the handful. Jobs that aren’t painful to go to and make you have people yell at you and treat you like that fly who keeps flying around the room, but just won’t die, those are hard to get.”
“It can’t be that bad, can it? What’s the worst thing that someone has ever said to you?”
“The worst?”
“Yeah, the most offensive thing. It couldn’t be as bad as what you’re making it.”
The pile that he could pick from was a big one, but Marcus knew exactly which guy was by far the worst person he had ever talked to on the phone. “I had a guy threaten to kill me.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, it wasn’t even like he hung up on me, or even swore at me a few times and then hung up, he went crazy. He went into detail, like how he would reverse track the number that I had dialed from, find out which company it belonged to, wait outside my job, and then kill me in the parking lot by mowing me over with his truck. He even said that he hopped that the hit wouldn’t kill me so that he could drag my body under his truck for a few miles.” It was by far his worst call, but the weirdest part about it for him was that he had just told a stranger about it over the phone like it was just another day at work. Make some calls, get the sales, and get threatened to be dragged under a truck until you die. Just another day at work.
“Wow, you need a drink,” she paused for a second to consider her options, “No, I’m going to buy you a drink. What area code are you in?”
Marcus double checked the area code he was calling on his screen, it was one state over, about a four hour drive. “Not the same area code as you, but close enough.”
“Good, because I’m pretty sure that if you weren’t close I’d be screwed. Most bars I know of don’t deliver. When was the last time you had a night out? It’s been too long since you’ve smiled.”
“I smile.”
“Right, and your real name is Albert.”
“No, I totally smile. Whenever I start a call I make sure that I’m smiling because my boss swears that people on the phone can hear the difference between when you’re smiling and when you’re not even if it’s just a phone call.”
“Your boss is a tool.”
“She’s a girl.”
“Girls can be tools. That’s not just a guy thing. Women everywhere fought for equal rights, so we can be called tools too. So about that drink and the night out that you needed, like, two months ago.”
“I don’t drink, so it hasn’t been ever since I’ve had a night out.”
“There’s a big difference between having a fun night out, and a fun night drinking. You can still have a good night without being drunk. I’m sure that you’ve had at least one night in your entire life that you could say was fun. Right? Even if it was when you were ten and you finally got to stay up and watch a TV show, you’ve had at least one fun night.”
“I guess.”
“And now you need to have another one. This weekend, meet me at the park that’s across the street from the police station, and we’ll get you to smile.”
“I’m sorry, I’m not into that. I’m not going to meet up with a stranger like that.”
“It’s across the street from the police. Bring your rape whistle, if I do anything funky they’ll be there. You know that you need a night out, or at least a dinner with someone like me.”
“Someone like you?”
“Yeah, someone like me. It’s a deal then? Saturday six-ish at the park?”
“Fine, I’ll be there.”
“And we’re not going to do that lame rom-com stuff of bringing a solitary rose or reading a victorian romance novel; bring the biggest bag of cereal you can find so I’ll know who you are. I’ll be the one walking around with a brand new 4,000 piece puzzle.”
“Cereal? A puzzle?”
“Hey, no complaining Einy. Worst case scenario where we can’t find anything else to do, we can have some good clean fun putting together the puzzle. I’ll see you there at six. Bye Einy!”
“Goodbye Ms. Winchester.”
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