Douglas Barbour wrote:
> ah so, that's what a 'cold call' is. Well, we're lucky in that we have
> a phone which shows the number of the caller, so we just don't
> answer...
>
>>> I take your point, but cold callers quickly go away as soon as, for
>>> instance, you say 'not BT customer/not homeowner/"Fuck off" '.
>>
You've set me off:-). Cold-calling is something I knew too much about
at one time. Late 1982-early '83 I found myself first as a trainee and
then a novice life insurance salesman for Metropolitan Life in New
York. Draw against commission. Cold-calling was something we did
routinely: you got a list of names from someplace and, if you could find
the phone numbers, called the people up. You called based on a "hook."
Some of us read the New Baby lists in newspapers, figuring someone with
a new child would be interested in protecting their descendants.
Others--and I didn't have the stomach for this--read obituaries and
called the survivors. Nothing like a dose of mortality to put you mind
of your own. For me there was NOTHING more difficult than calling up a
total stranger and doing the canned pitch they taught us in training
school. You had to innure yourself to being told to fuck off, get hung
up on, or get icy "No thank yous" from people you wanted to let you into
their homes.
I think the word now is "trolling." In 1982 there was no such word but
the phenomenon was nevertheless real.
Ken
-----------------------------
Kenneth Wolman www.kenwolman.com kenwolman.blogspot.com
"A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank balance was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove...but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child."
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