Hanging up is too good for them

“Don’t hang up. This is not a sales call. Are you suffer—”

The only thing I was suffering from was the inability to complete an afternoon nap without some telemarketer interrupting me.

This country used to stand for something. Our people used to stand for something. We took pride in our work. When did we become a nation of people who don’t care?

What I’m talking about, of course, is pick-up lines. Pick-up lines today leaves a person with no choice but to hang up.

How many times can a person cold-call me and ask if I’m suffering from chronic pain and not expect me to answer, “The only pain I’m suffering from is a pain in the ass about four times a week from someone like you asking me if I’m suffering from chronic pain,” after which I brashly hang up.

How many times must I be reminded that the warranty on my 2003 Tribute has expired? Hell, yes, it’s expired. It expired in 2005.

How many times must Bridget from card services call to inform me that, no there isn’t anything wrong with my credit, but yes I might be paying too much interest on my credit card debt, which apparently she doesn’t know doesn’t exist.

Bridget has no credibility. Sometimes it’s Bridget from Cincinnati. Sometimes it’s Bridget from Des Moines. Sometimes it’s Bridget from Paducah. 

I keep getting these calls with the same worn-out, meaningless opening lines. As young men, hell, as high school boys, we learn that pick-up lines are useless at best and lame ones are actually damaging to one’s reputation—unless you’re living in a war zone.

The last time pick-up lines worked on me was when I was serving in Vietnam. Whenever a Vietnamese girl wearing hip American-styled clothes, enough make-up to put Mona Lisa to shame, and calling herself, Linda, might have approached me on Tu Do Street, smiled and uttered the words, “Hey, G.I., you look lonely. You looking for girl friend?”

My answer, unless an M.P. was standing within listening range was always, “Yes. Yes. I am. How did you know?” We’d then go inside the bar and I’d spend the last of my monopoly money on endless drinks. Hers was a pick-up line I couldn’t refuse.

However, my living room is not a war zone. The sofa I’m lying on is not a bunker. Most of all, I’m not falling for a pick-up line that begins with, “Don’t hang up.”

Really! “Don’t hang up” is how you expect to keep me on the line.

I used to be a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman. I’m not bragging, but I will say, it was harder than being stationed in Vietnam. I wasn’t a particularly good salesman, but a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. In many ways, I wasn’t much different than today’s telemarketer. I arrived unannounced, probably at a bad time and selling a product most people already had and didn’t need.

There was one difference between me and today’s intruder. I was working a whole lot harder. I wasn’t running down a list of names. I was walking a neighborhood of houses. Slamming the door in my face was still an option just as slamming the phone down is today, but as a salesman and not a telemarketer, I think I brought a little more to the table.

In fact, the first bit of advice I ever received from my boss was not to stick my foot in the door to prevent it from closing. He told me to stick my head in the door so I could keep talking. Furthermore, continuing to talk didn’t mean throwing out some hackneyed line. Unlike the telemarketer who is probably talking to himself after I hang up, I had a routine that—

Sorry, I had to step away from my computer to answer a, “Don’t hang up. Are you suffering from chronic pain,” call. That means Bridget will be calling any minute.

As I was saying, yes, there was a routine that required imagination, thinking on my feet, a certain amount of risk taking, a—

Visa MasterCard just called, but it wasn’t Bridget. She must be sick today.

Again, as I was saying, the goal was to get inside the house and how I accomplished that task was different almost every time.

Door-to-door sales is a crummy job, but I worked hard at it. Harder, certainly than the two people who I just hung up on—and to be clear, I know they weren’t even real people. They were the equivalent of a vacuum cleaner ringing someone’s doorbell fifty years ago.

Getting back to my job, and hopefully before any more interruptions, the work was hard. Before I ever even asked a potential customer to buy something from me, I had to do something for them.

From my vantage point standing on their step-well and looking inside the slightly cracked-open door, I’d notice—maybe envision is a better word—a spot or stain on the carpet.

Politely, but without asking permission, I’d lean in with my small bottle of spot remover that I manipulated in my hand eight hours a day, six days a week until I’d wake up in the middle of the night imagining that I was still holding—

That was credit card services offering me a last chance to lower my interest rate. Last chance? Who are they kidding? I’m keeping the phone next to the computer. They’ll be back. Believe me.

Anyway, as I was saying, I see a stain...it doesn’t have to be real. I just have to physically get to the spot before the woman’s eyes do, which I succeed in doing. I apply the lotion and rub out the real or imaginary spot. Alas, I have created another spot, a light circle bigger than the original spot that sticks out like a lunar eclipse on her carpet.

“No problem ma’am. Let me run out to my car and get my shampooer and clean the whole area.”

I don’t wait for an okay. I come back with the shampooer.

“Ma’am, before I put shampoo on your carpet, could I go over it with your vacuum to get any loose dirt out? We don’t want to do any permanent damage.”

I proceed to vacuum her carpet, but something is making me uncomfortable. At least that is the impression she gets if I am doing my job right.

“I want to make sure we get all the dirt out, ma’am. Would you mind if I go over it with my vacuum?” Again, I don’t wait for an answer. I rush out the door, only to return with a brand new vacuum I pulled out of my trunk. I proceed to vacuum her carpet one more time. This is where the real work comes in, an effort no telemarketer reading off a script would ever dream of making.

My vacuum has a reusable bag, whose contents I dump on her carpet in a neat little pile.

“Wow. I guess your vacuum must have left a little dirt behind. Good thing I went over it with my machine.”

I should note that my machine is a sleek golden marvel that looks as if it could go into orbit around the earth with but a few minor adjustments.

“I’m going to go over it one more time to make sure I’ve gotten all the dirt out before I put the shampoo on.”

This is where the job gets even harder, in a way that Bridget or the folks at card services or the ones who want to sell me something for my chronic pain would never understand. The dirt pile rule is, keep vacuuming and dumping little piles of dirt and don’t even mention that they might need a newer vacuum cleaner till there are fifty piles of dirt lined up on the carpet. You heard me right. Fifty piles of dirt lined up and looking like a battalion marching across her room.

All this before I even suggests she might need a new machine and before all the inevitable negotiating and price haggling that will follow.

Back then, it wasn’t a quick, hastily-thought-out pick-up line, a click and then off to the next number.

Back then, we worked a complete neighborhood before moving on. We wouldn’t return for weeks, maybe months. If I knocked on the same door every day at the same time with the same, “Is that a stain I see on your carpet?” line, I’d deserve to have the door slammed in my face.

 

That’s how we did things in the pre-telemarketing days. I wish I could slam a door on the people who keep interrupting my naps. 

They don’t even have to suffer the indignation of having the phone slammed down. They just hear a click and move on.

That is simply too easy on them and not nearly gratifying enough for me to compensate for the chronic pain they are causing me.

Note: The three times in this essay when I was interrupted by a telemarketer were not put in by me for effect. I was actually called three times in the space of about ten minutes by telemarketers, one of which begged me not to hang up.