Tele-Marketing: A Nuisance or Entertainment?

Yesterday, I was watching “Friends”. Lisa Kudrow (as call center gal) made me feel call center jobs cud well be entertaining for both the parties. Earlier I used to get peeved to receive any call that tries to sell me some stuff over phone, but now after seeing this serial, I thought I can covert these intrusive and invasive calls into nuggets of entertainment during work hours. One of my friends got a call from a bank to buy its credit card. Despite being irritated with the call at odd time, he politely refused saying he already has two. The lady at other end suggested him that three is ideal number and started giving a discourse on why one should have more number of cards. My friend, quite annoyed, asked her if she cud give him 1000 cards. The lady was bit confused and before she could speak anything he said, he has found a big Dinosaur Egg and tht he want to hatch the egg by incubating it with credit cards. Needless to say the phone was hung.

Deeply inspired by Lisa Kudrow and my friend Ramsu, I was awaiting a call from any merchandise, and I got one from Country club. Earlier, she has asked me several times to become member of Country Club and patiently enumerated all the benefits. I used to simply say “Not now or Its costly..” This time our conversation was as follows..

“ is any swimming pool “
“Yes sir infact we replace water every day”
“can I bring my pet animals to the club”
“yes sir”.
“Ok ..I am planning to get two of my Buffaloes. Will u charge me extra money for this?””(Giggling) No sir.. U cant bring Buffaloes…U can get ur dog”
“But u just said we can get our pets”
“Buffaloes are not pets”
“No they are…. I rear them….”
“sorry sir.. they our policy does not allow tht”
“Ok fine…next time if u call me. Make sure we can get all our pets..infact I am planning to get a pig this weekend … and I wud love ot get tht too…

Call hangs up….and I had my fun at work…

Months after Supreme court’s ban of “Unsolicited calls”, we still get calls asking us to spare few minutes to listen to a standard dialogue delivery. Its certainly intrusive and has negative impact on performance at work. We cannot again do wat Harsh Patak did. A better way out is to convert this harassment to fun by bullying the caller. :-)