Shenanigans

In my final year at high school I found a cellphone that somebody had accidentally left behind on the bus. Being the responsible young woman that I was, I texted the guy’s mother to let her know her son had left his phone on the school bus. She asked me to get in touch with the boy’s girlfriend, as she went to my school. I did, and we arranged to meet up after our first class.

Seizing the opportunity while we could, my friend Janine and I spent the whole of that class filling his phone with silly photos of ourselves. I had crutches at the time because I had torn the cartilage in my knee, so when we set one of the photos as his wallpaper it showed me pretending to shoot Janine with the end of the crutch.

We were very pleased with ourselves when we gave the phone to that girl afterwards.

P.S I must be a super good person, because as well as giving that phone back, I once found $75 just lying on the ground and took it in to the school office. Tooting my own horn here but man, I’m great.

Sigh

My boyfriend starts work at 8am, so whenever I have to get up early for class, I’ll give him a call to say hi and tell him he’s handsome. Because I’m on my break at the moment, I’ve been sleeping in, and haven’t been calling him in the mornings.

Today he excitedly said to me: “Hey, are you going to call me tomorrow morning?”

“Uh . . . no?” I replied. “Should I?”

“I thought you had a nine o’clock start,” he said.

“No, I told you I’m waking up at nine.”

“Oh . . . you could wake up at seven and call me, then go back to sleep?”

I felt warm and fuzzy inside that he really wanted to hear from me in the morning. I was feeling the love.

“I can call you in the morning if you want,” I said.

“Oh good. I need you to remind me to take out the rubbish at seven.”

All that time, I thought he wanted to hear my voice when he woke up. I thought he missed getting morning phone calls from me before work. I thought he was being sweet.

Guess I was wrong.

beep beep beep beep

Working at a market research call centre has given me superior knowledge of what a disconnected phone line sounds like.

It’s become a special talent of mine, to be able to recognise every single different tone of a phone that’s not in service.

I feel proud, but I know I shouldn’t be.

So punny…

My friend told me that the phone in her office smelled really good whenever she picked it up, and I said: “It must be a SMELLOPHONE”.

I feel proud.

A little common courtesy

I work part time at a market research company. That immediately puts me in the decidedly un-elite list of generally hated people.

Sure, sure, I get it, you’re tired and grouchy, you just came home from work and want to relax for a moment. You’re pondering whether or not to start cooking dinner, but while you’re still mulling it over, the phone rings.

“Hi, my name’s Melissa from -” You hang up.

People actually do that. They can tell just by the tone of my voice and the way I introduce myself, even before I say where I’m from. They know what I am. 

So yeah, I get it. The last thing you want to do is a phone survey about how the customer service was the last time you called your insurance company. The thing that I don’t get is why people have to be so damn rude about it.

I’m a tertiary student. I’m poor. Market research is the only job I can have that will be flexible around class hours, as well as let me have weekends off to see my boyfriend, who lives in another city. The only shifts I can work are 5.30 to 8.30, the exact time when people don’t want to be called.

I am absolutely not sorry for disturbing anyone’s evening with a simple phone call, because when it comes down to getting in the way slightly of somebody’s relaxation time or being able to afford warmer clothes for Winter or maybe a pair of shoes without holes in them, I know that my situation takes precedence.

I had a man today who agreed to do the survey. I told him it was about ten minutes, depending on his answers, and I told him that it was about the customer service he received when he called a certain organisation which I won’t name. It wasn’t even as if I bullied him into doing it, he just said “go ahead” and that was that.

But after a few minutes he was sighing and grumbling, and after another couple of minutes he was saying under his breath “this is getting ridiculous”. About three quarters of the way through he was telling me, quite irritably, to hurry up already, and that he didn’t know why I was asking him ridiculous questions about something that happened a month ago. Knowing that I’d get in trouble if I skipped anything, I plowed steadily on, finally reaching the end of the survey and asking him if he’d like a number to call in case he had any questions about the survey.

“No I don’t want the number, I couldn’t give a stuff about it, this is ridiculous,” he fumed.

“Thankyou for doing the survey,” I said cheerily.

“This is ridiculous,” he repeated, “I won’t be doing this ever again.”

I don’t know if that old geezer didn’t realise that I don’t write the surveys, but it’s about time people wrap their heads around it. What’s more, he knew exactly what the survey was going to be about, he knew exactly how long it would take, and he had the option, at any point, to say to me that he’d rather not continue with the survey. Yet instead he sat there bemoaning the types of questions and the “tediousness” of it, and continuously told me to hurry up. I’m bewildered as to why he ever agreed to do the survey if he was going to throw such a tantrum about it halfway through.

People like that make this job more mentally taxing than it needs to be. People like that make me lose just a little faith in humanity, because if they’re this disrespectful to a stranger on the phone, then what kind of values are they teaching to others? To their children? To their grandchildren?

I once called a house and got a youngish-sounding girl, who then went to get a parent for me to talk to.

“Who is it?” I heard the parent ask.

“It’s one of those people you get to be rude to!” The girl replied excitedly.

Yeah. Hurrah. Fun times.

I think what I’m trying to say is that market researchers are people too. Just because we annoy you doesn’t mean we don’t deserve to be treated with the same amount of respect as any other person. That goes for everybody. Maybe the Mormons showing up at your front door or the telemarketer trying to sell you things over the phone. Everybody deserves to be treated with respect. Just because we annoy you doesn’t mean we are suddenly the scum beneath your feet.

I’m ready for a change.