In a medium such as this, I can be as anonymous as I choose. All you can see of me are my words, these little black shapes on the white field that your brain scrambles about to mean something. You can't see me, can't hear me, can't smell me. This is quite a joy most of the time as I can sit here naked, scraping my nails on a chalkboard while covered in rotten eggs and limburger cheese. But, when it comes to some topics I feel I need to give a description of myself. I am a rotund guy. Right now I am wearing orange and sitting next to a basketball. You could not tell the difference between me and the basketball. That's about all you need to know this time.
Ever so often I think about dieting. I consider cutting down to five square meals a day, but my dear wife LIKES me this way. I suppose I can see why. When she gets mad at me, all she has to do is give me a shove and I roll down the hill into the mudpit outside our hillbilly neighbors' house.
So, to keep her happy, I must overeat and I must overeat often. Today I had the chance to go to Cici's Pizza. I like that place as you can chow down on all the pizza and brownies you want for less than ten dollars. (Please don't tell my wife, but I started the meal with a salad). Upon entering the door I was greeted by Nikki. Now, Nikki has been working at this particular Cici's for at least five years by my count. I recognize her immediately by her bird song voice and her big bright eyes. I have determined that the girl is both very pleasant and very insane. She must be insane as no normal person could be as pleasant as she always is. But, every time I am in there she asks, "have you ever been to Cici's before?" I always tell myself that the next time I visit Cici's I am going to start out by saying, "yes, Nikki, I have been to Cici's before." But, I never do. I don't want to be the one customer that puts an end to her otherwise eternal perkiness.
Besides, I'm sure that she is forced to ask that question. Somewhere in her job description she probably has a quota to meet. She must ask 98.5% of all customers if they have been to Cici's before or she will become part of next week's pepperoni.
And I can relate. I have had jobs in the past where I was forced to say something stupid on a regular basis. A couple of summers ago I worked for one company for the better part of an afternoon. I can't tell you their name, but the initials of the company are "A" "T" and "T". While there, I had to say to every customer, "it's been my pleasure". That's right. Even if the customer was swearing at me, cursiong out his phone plan, his phone, me, my family, my heritage, my religion and making fun of me for wearing black socks and white shoes, I had to tell them that it was my pleasure to talk to them.
I've done a lot of telemarketing in my past and let me tell you, no job in the world has more stupid stuff forced upon the employees to say than in telemarketing. I would go through every single stupid thing I had to say, but I don't have copies of every script I have ever used. That's right: 100% of everything a telemarketer is forced to say is stupid. One of the worst was, "I can certainly understand your hesitation". This was the way to begin a rebuttal when someone was trying to say "no". No matter how adamant, how loud or how direct the no, we would say, "I can certainly understand your hesitation."
CUSTOMER: What? You're calling me in the middle of my mother's funeral to try to sell me something? I have no money and I already have seventeen accidental death and dismemberment policies linked to every one of my 37 credit cards! My poor mother had even more than I have and where are you guys for her? She fell out of a roller coaster and into a dunk tank where a clown fell on her and they both drowned. You guys are saying it's natural causes and you can't pay! How dare you call me about this crap at a time like this!
TELEMARKETER: I can certainly understand your hesitation.
And the above dramatization shows something stupid that telemarketers are not necessarily told to say, but told to believe and that is everyone they call is a customer. Wrong numbers, answering machines, baby sitters, polite burglers answering the phone - it doesn't matter. They're all customers. What if all companies thought like this? Imaging leaving your house early in the morning to go to work and WHAM some guys in blue shirts and khaki pants are dragging you to Walmart to try to sell you something. (Not long ago I worked for Walmart and I'll let you in on a secret: They are currently working on getting legislation passed to do just what I described in the last sentence. Beware!)
Speaking of Walmart, while I was there, they would once in a while, drag me kicking and screaming to the cashier stand to run the registers. The dumbest thing I had to ever do at Walmart was to, after ringing people up, ask, "will that be all?" I always wondered what I was supposed to do or say if someone answered, "why, no. That's only half of it. Wait here while I shop some more."
I think it is due to jobs like this that, for pretty much all my life, I dream of being a writer. There are two major differences between being a writer and the jobs I mentioned above: 1) I no longer have to say stupid things, I put them in writing and 2) at least I get to decide what stupid things I'll be writing instead of letting someone else come up with it for me.
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