Some of you know, (and some of don’t) that I work in sales and marketing. Some of my job is telesales. Purely to businesses. Purely 9-5. I don’t read off a script, I have a conversation with them. I don’t hassle people. If they say not interested then fine. Thanks for your time. Goodbye. I am *always* polite. Never shitty, never pushy. A lot of people I have contacted still contact me months on for repeat orders
Most people are nice. Or if not nice, polite. Or if not polite, manageable. Then there are the other people.
I HATE rudeness. I really don’t think there is any need for it at all. Especially if the person you are being rude to is being polite and pleasant. Most people, I have already said, are not rude. There are not nearly as many rude people out there as I thought there would be when I took this job on. The situation might be different if I was ringing people’s homes when Corrie was on, but I’m not. I’m ringing businesses about local business related things. Things that could (and more often than not do) save them a shit load of money on stuff they’d have to buy anyway (on ink and toner if you’re interested – and normally we’re talking a 50% saving).
So. I call a gentleman up. This was *not* a cold call, by the way. He’d spoken to us before and had agreed to get an email with some details. He was so rude, bordering on accusatory, and I had to be polite and say thank you very much and ended the call. I don’t see why I should do though. He has no right to treat me as sub human. He agreed to the information and had spoken to us before. I so desperately wanted to pull him up on it, but of course couldn’t. I had to smile and carry on.
Here is what I would have loved to have said.
“....excuse me Mr [bleep], but what the hell is your problem. Are you so misanthropic that you speak to everyone like that, or is it just you think you can speak to me like that because there is are 2 handsets and some cables between us. I don’t care that you’ve had a bad day, how great do you think mine has being having to speak to people who make me feel crappy. If you don’t want cold callers, TPS your number. It’s your right and a legal requirement that we follow it. If you just say “no thanks” then fine, ill fuck off and leave you be. But you have no right, to make me feel 2 inches tall....”
All I’m asking people to remember is that there are people on the end of these phones. People doing a job. Like what you do, I do and everyone else does. And guess what, we may not like it all of the time. This isn’t necessarily what we dreamt of doing when we were young and full of hope - but it pays the fucking bills. Common courtesy costs absolutely nothing and may make one person’s day a hell of a lot easier.
For those wanting to register as TPS and stop sales calls, please visit http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/tps/
Rant over
