Smells Like American Spirit

“Everyone said that telemarketing was the worst job in town, and for once, everyone was right.” Franklin Schneider did it out of economic necessity, figured out how to be good at it, and then saw how being a good telemarketer was incompatible with being a good person—your soul doesn’t escape unscathed when you’re up to your elbows in grift and get rejected 100 times a day. Telemarketing shapes our world, and not for the better. At least we got Schneider’s excellent read out of it.

Once I started sitting by my fellow top sellers, I noticed that they seemed to enjoy ripping people off. Lying was de rigueur, of course, and rates and plans were fabricated on the spot to close a sale—that’s not what I’m talking about. Instead, leads who begged to be put on the no-call list got vindictively scheduled for Saturday morning callbacks. When a sobbing woman said she couldn’t talk now, her husband was dying, my colleague snapped, Then why’d you answer the phone, Linda? It seemed personal for them.

It didn’t take me long to understand why. We had quotas to meet, and not meeting them could have severe consequences. (As in Glengarry Glen Ross, “first prize is a Cadillac … third prize is you’re fired.”) We badly needed a steady drip of yeses from these people. But the best salesman who ever lived couldn’t close more than 5 to 10 percent of cold calls, which means that the vast majority of everyone you speak to is going to be a no. Eventually, as you’re hung up on, insulted, rejected by hundreds of leads a day, you realize that, miraculously, you have found the architects of your misery: Here, right here—these are the people responsible! The people you’re trying to rip off are simultaneously ripping you off. They are both exploited and exploiters, saviors and enemies. You depend on them, and dependence can only breed contempt.

So when we promised a lady that we were going to send her a check to “offset” her $75 switching fee (the check was for $1.99), or we told some guy that his master file showed he was already paying 40 cents a minute with the competition (we had no way to know what anyone was paying), and the third-party compliance or a manager cut in on the line and said, Hey, you can’t say that, that’s not legal, we dismissed them as soft, out of touch. Fairness, conscience, empathy, and honesty were luxuries that, like caviar or health insurance, were for other people—we had to work for a living. We were victims. Therefore, we had license to take whatever measures were necessary. Once this worldview sets in, it’s very difficult to break out of, not least because it often feels so perfectly just.