At this point I was supposed to write "doing sod all" or something similar, but I appear to have become a receptionist imprisoned in my own home.
It was a conscious decision to do very little at all this week in an attempt to recover from recent stresses and strains of the day job and to date, I have held my part of the bargain pretty well. I've spent loads of time gawping in awe at the variety of on-demand telly rather than watch the scheduled junk they continue to belch out throughout the day. I've wasted endless hours on You Tube having finally discovered it's not entirely full of teenage would-be Jackass contributors, but probably constitutes the biggest video jukebox on the net. Not to mention some very talented individuals committing their own interpretations of the same tunes to screen.
What has taken me by surprise is the barrage of telesales calls made to my house and more so by their persistence despite my best attempts to politely tell them that I'm not interested. I appreciate that these poor souls are only doing a job and no doubt suffer enough verbal abuse without my adding to it, but my continued firm but fair approach is clearly not working.
I politely stopped one girl a few minutes ago saying, "Sorry, I'm going to have to stop you there because I'm rather busy right now and don't really have time for telesales conversations".
At this, I would have expected "OK that's fine, could we arrange another more convenient time to call you", but she surprised me with "Oh, I think you've misunderstood, this isn't a telesales call, I'm not trying to sell you anything". OK, I was intrigued.
She continued, "I wanted to discuss insurance cover for your contract mobile phone as we are currently offering three months free cover". How kind.
I felt obliged to stop her in her tracks again "And after the three months I'm guessing you will start charging me for this cover?"
"Well, yes"
"Which albeit three months away, means you are trying to sell me something. Thanks for your call but I'm really not interested. Bye"
Chances are she will have ticked my name on her attempted sales call list whilst muttering something along the lines of my being a miserable git.
In which case, I would have lost nothing by just telling her to piss off from the outset...
3 comments:
When they try to sell me cable TV over here, I always ask - "does this package come with CNN?" (knowing full well it does). Their voice brightens, as they think they've hooked me - "oh yes, of course.", they say.
Dramatic pause...
"Oh well," I say, "I don't want it then."
Then I hang up while they ponder "wait a minute, where did this sale go wrong????"
A quote from the following handily placed nearby:
English/swedish dictionary.
The bible
An Ikea catalogue
The Great Big Book of British Newts (with the Continental addendum).
A Jamaican cookbook.
Australian slang terms.
Failing that you can play greensleeves...the ocarina version as you place them on hold.
An insurance company once called me trying to sell me life insurance. I promptly told them that "Pete Frenzy" had died - hoping they would take me off their list. "Oh dear" she says "He has his house and car insurance with us". Realising it was my own insurance company I back-tracked and said "I am alive again". A bit embarrassing ...
Post a Comment