Calling on You

CBN.com - According to a recent story in Wisconsin’s Green Bay Press Gazette, the popular “Do Not Call List”, designed to thwart those pesky telemarketing calls during the dinner hour just isn’t working. In fact, it is the number one complaint made to the state of Wisconsin this year.

The “Do Not Call” program, thought to be the solution for unwelcome salesmen hawking anything from phone plans to phonetic language studies, has been a pariah of sorts. Despite more than 1.5 million people who signed up for the program when it began in October 2002, states like Wisconsin have received more than 5,000 complaints this year alone from people who say the plan is a sham. This is surprising news considering companies violating the legislation can be fined $100 per call.

As a former telemarketer, all I can say is ‘I feel your pain.’ If I was still working the phones the way I did for one teeth grinding summer 15 years ago, I can honestly say I would not call you. For you see, I didn’t want to call you. I didn’t want to call anybody. In fact, to this day I don’t care for talking on the telephone due to that fateful summer. I just wanted the seven dollars per hour that the telemarketing company was willing to pay me for a summer’s worth of work … or lack thereof. The way I had it figured, this exercise in phone futility would pay me two dollars more per hour than the monotonous job I had previously lined up to chop vegetables in a summer camp kitchen. It would mean earning $800 dollars more over the course of the summer. Furthermore, it would reduce the risk of me slicing and dicing my fingers. All I had to do was sit around my own office and make a few calls per day. Easy money, right? Wrong.

Let’s start with the office. Despite the ringing endorsement of a few friends who had worked there the summer before, I was mortified to find that my “office” consisted of a six foot by six foot cubicle with five foot high carpeted walls. I would be sharing my office with 50 other college students also in desperate need of back to school cash. My desk was nothing more than a metallic folding table, the kind you find at church suppers. Resting idly on the table was an old black phone that looked like it had been around since the Eisenhower administration. Beside it was a five inch thick stack of “leads” that I was to call that day. Being the bean counter I am, I counted the number of people I was to call: 200. I knew at that moment that it was going to be a very long summer.

My first day on the job was largely uneventful. After making the incredibly wise decision to pace myself, my tick sheet (a statistical breakdown of my motivational phone manner) read: 22 calls, 1 yes, 7 no's, 10 hang ups, 4 did not answer. I was fairly satisfied with my performance until I walked out with my friend Ryan at the conclusion of that first eight hour shift. He had made 127 calls with 54 yes responses. I was doomed. I was sure to be fired. But amazingly it never happened.

About two weeks into the job, I was completely miserable. In a desperate attempt that I now regret for its lack of maturity, I did what every other irresponsible 20 year old manchild might do. I decided to make the job more fun by using my own special brand of phone etiquette.

I found myself altering the prepared script while pretending I was someone other than myself. For example, I was supposed to say, “Hello, this is Chris Carpenter calling from County Savings Bank. I would like to take a moment to share with you today about our great new savings plan that is sure to not only benefit you but more importantly your bank account.” Instead, I would amuse myself by saying, “Hello, this is Dusty Hoffman calling from County Savings Bank. I would like to take up your entire afternoon by sharing a savings plan with you that could earn you thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest in just months. I am not supposed to share this with you, but hey, that is what our bank is all about. We want to share the secret loophole with you.” It certainly got people's interest.

When my supervisor found out that I had been doctoring the script, she was far from amused. While she commended me for my creativity, she warned that I was not being a good representative for our clients. She went on to tell me how much potential I had and what a benefit I could be for the company. Apparently she hadn’t been paying attention to my tick sheet too closely.

Just as the job was about to spin out of control (I had recently been caught eating a salad while talking to customers on the phone … apparently chewing noises were frowned upon by the company), I was assigned to a new campaign that was exciting to me. My company had been contracted by a small bank on the coast of Maine to conduct a customer satisfaction survey. This bank just happened to be my hometown bank. I not only knew people who worked for this institution for savings and loans but upon closer inspection of the leads, many of the people I had been assigned to call were friends and neighbors. While there would be no commissions, I would at least feel comfortable talking to these people. These were my people!

Within the first hour of the day, I discovered that I was supposed to call my seventh grade social studies teacher, Mr. Gardner. I dialed the digits with a sense of zeal I hadn’t experienced all summer. This was to be my turning point, an opportunity to salvage what had become a lost summer adrift on a telephone.

Ring, ring, ring …

“Hello?”

“Hello! My name is Chris Carpenter and I was in your seventh grade social studies class!”

“Congratulations,” said a sarcastically gruff voice on the other end of the phone. “What do you want?”

I paused. I always remembered Mr. Gardner as being a cheerful sort of fellow. This gentleman virtually sneered.

“You don’t remember me?” I crowed. “I hung around with Paul Mayfair and Burt Rickman. You called us the “Three Amigos.”

“Is this some sort of joke? I don’t have time for your (expletive deleted). This better be good or I am going to reach through that phone and rip your teeth out.”

“Well I am calling on behalf of Coastal Bank. We are conducting a survey on ….”

Click. A dial tone followed. Mr. Gardner had not only sworn at me, but he didn’t even have the decency to let me read through my script. I had officially hit rock bottom. I couldn’t even communicate effectively with people that I knew. It was time to quit. Even though I had three weeks remaining before returning to college, I had had enough. It was time to cut the phone cord and admit that I had failed miserably in my attempt to earn $800 extra dollars for the summer.

Placing my head in my hands, I mumbled out to the Lord, “I am a complete failure. I don’t know what you are trying to teach me through this but I don’t think I want to know. Why are you punishing me?”

Following my desperate plea to God I began to clean out my desk. I was just about to go officially quit when I remembered that I needed to turn my leads in. As I was picking them up I couldn’t help but notice that Mr. Gardner’s name was spelled incorrectly. It was supposed to be written as J-E-A-N. We had it spelled G-E-N-E. I picked it up for a closer examination. It was definitely spelled G-E-N-E and had a Maine address. As I was putting it back down on the stack I discovered that there was another Gardner lead beneath it. The first name of that one was spelled J-E-A-N. A ray of hope suddenly coursed through my entire being. I had called the wrong Gene/Jean!

I grabbed the phone and rapidly dialed the number for J-E-A-N Gardner. To my delight, my seventh grade social studies teacher answered. We had a wonderful conversation about what I was doing for the summer and he took the survey. He concluded the conversation by saying, “Keep up the good work. You are representing our town well out there in the big city.”

That was all I needed to hear. The remaining three weeks of my employment, while not easy, were much more rewarding knowing that my former teacher thought I was representing my town well. I guess he hadn’t heard about my “Dusty Hoffman” phone calls and chewing into the phone receiver.

In

Sometimes we let circumstances and feelings control our responses to others, how we conduct our personal affairs, and how we honor, or in some cases dishonor God. When things look bright, we are thankful and our attitude is positive. But when personal failures and lack of effort creep into our daily walk with Him, we lose hope and feel forsaken.

It is imperative that we praise God with our spirits and minds despite the way we feel about a certain situation that we are mired in. Continuously praising God loosens the enemy’s grasp on us when we find ourselves in a vulnerable circumstance. When our focus is upon God and not on the desperate motives of our flesh, we can freely commit ourselves to Him. With our mouths we can praise Him, and within our hearts we will be blessed.

Admittedly, I was a horrible and spiteful telemarketer. My heart just wasn’t in it. But through Christ, I had a hope that my future jobs would be better. The Lord took a situation where I had been far from Christ-like and showed me a ray of light. He encouraged me that I would make it through the remainder of the summer and that better days would be ahead. He was true to His word. I worked construction the following summer and had a much better experience. And the summer after that? I got my first real job.

By the way, when we received our commission checks at the end of the summer, my friend Ryan received more than $750 dollars. I made $38.

Information contained within this article from the Transformer Study Bible.

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