Things that get old really *** quickly when you're working phone research:

[azurelunatic]

"Oh, you're working for telemarketing?"

No. It's not fucking telemarketing, because I don't fucking sell you anything. There's a distinct legal difference, which makes it so the company can call you even if you're on the telemarketers' do not call list.


"If you call me, I'll be so pissed at you."

If I call you, the odds are mightily against it, I don't pick the numbers, the computer does, and if I even notice it, I can't interview you, because company policy prohibits us from interviewing family, friends, or even anyone we know.


"I never answer the phone when it comes up all zeroes. I hate it when they call."

If you never answer and firmly and immovably request to be taken off the list and/or put on the company's internal do not call list, whichever, you're going to get called by computer repeatedly until the study's over, just in case you might be home.

Comments

[nilodlien.livejournal.com]

Crap, so you're a telemarketer? Why do you always call at dinner?

*ducks and runs out of the journal

[ekaterin.livejournal.com]

Because at diner you are at home, and reachable...

I am not a telemarketer, nor a phone researcher, but I work for the national statistics office here. And we do telephone surveys, and thus call people. Not random calls, but specific households. People at my office work in telephone teams from 10-13, 13-17 and 17-21 o'clock, and the evening team is twice as large as the others, because more people are at home at those hours.

[azurelunatic]

Exactly.

And often we have called earlier, and no one picked up.

[crisavec.livejournal.com]

I thought the correct procedure was to ask to be placed ON the DoNotCall list, not be removed from the call list?

[azurelunatic]

Evidently either goes these days.

[sithjawa.livejournal.com]

I hate calls by computer, because (1) there's this pause between picking up and anyone talking during which I think "oh, prank call" and hang up (after which the computer invariably delays just long enough for me to be far away from the phone, and then calls back), (2) they always spend about 15 minutes explaining that it's a call by computer, and (3) one time a company called by computer and had a message saying that hanging up on the call was a prosecutable offense. WTF?

My opinion on telemarketing -- I don't hate telemarketers particularly, there are oodles of things I dislike much more, like annoying hold systems -- is that if it's going to take up my time, it had damn well better involve the company having to pay an actual person for their time. And companies whose service I already use calling me to try to blackmail me into using portions of their product that I don't like counts as telemarketing.

Damn computer calls. But anyway, the only thing I always hate about telephone surveys is my responses are almost always nonstandard (like "I'm of mixed race" or "I don't know what cable company I use because my apartment complex pays for it, but I assume it's AT&T because I think they're the only one available" or "No, I didn't watch any TV last year" or "how the heck do you 'trust' or 'distrust' a cable company? What service do they offer that could possibly require my trust? I don't think they're going to use my credit card to order a kilogram of pot, or steal my underwear while setting up my cable, if that's what you mean. I trust them to deliver my cable. I also don't agree with every decision they make, and I'm sure they've done many more things I don't know about that I'd disagree with, but 'trust' doesn't really enter into it."

(In Oregon, some surveyer called me to ask if I trusted my cable company. I was very, very confused.)

[azurelunatic]

With this, there is a supposedly slight pause as the real human is put on, with apparently no computer talking. I hope.

[sithjawa.livejournal.com]

the problem I've had is that "a slight pause" means you say "hello?" and no one answers. If I say "hello?" twice with no answer (2-3 seconds total) I'm hanging up. Sometimes the pause is more than that. Often there's a click after about a second, then another second pause, then a person... once or twice, I've had the experience of picking up the phone, there's a click and then the sound of a phone ringing. That usually annoys me enough that I hang up.

I wonder what those systems do if there's no available human...

Of course, none of that is as weird as the one time, when I got a call on my cell phone, and when I answered it, an obviously recorded voice said "I'm sorry, I seem to have dialed a wrong number." or something like that, and hung up.

I mean, it *could* have been a human who, due to lots of professional recording experience, couldn't talk in anything but a recording-style voice, but I *really* doubt it.

[azurelunatic]

When there is no availible human, the system hangs up on a number of very annoyed people, and the company gets potentially fined.

[wibbble]

> "If you call me, I'll be so pissed at you."

If you call me, I'm going to boggle a lot. And then spin the survey out for as long as possible. ;o)

[azurelunatic]

Ha!

Nah, we don't do overseas work. I think we might do Canadian, occasionally, though.

[thette.livejournal.com]

I did that, too. I'm now involved in another branch of the datacollecting for the giant twin project.

[azurelunatic]

I'm hoping that this time I could maybe be promoted quickly.

[thette.livejournal.com]

Fun thing is, it's completely independent of the first job, or rather, I was probably going to be hired for the summer project I did in 2002 anyway, but my experiences on the first job made the professors say "Oh, goodie, you're welcome anytime!" though not quite in those words.

[azurelunatic]

I was pulled to monitor in July after I came back from vacation.