Civility still exists, but it is in shreds.
I suppose some sort of study exists that tracks how likely the average American will hang up on a true sales conversation. We are attemptingo to be civil.
In other words, there are rooms all over America filled with telemarketers that randomly call folks with various offers. It must work very well because there are so many of them. I
Of course the profit margin isn’t as great as it might be, because you have to rent the room, buy all the equipment, and to a certain extent share the profits with your phone bank people. Ha!
What if they weren’t people?
So, then we enter the realm of automated telemarketing. It didn’t take long to find out that Americans had no problem hanging up on robots. If the message isn’t heard, then no sales occur. So, they got clever.
The brightest of the automatic telemarketers had a work around. Record a bright cheery young female voice with just the right tone to be perceived “personable”.
Then delay the response to the normal “Hello” so that the called individual says “Hello” again. Ha! That qualifies as a conversation!
Now, here is the money shot, the bright young lady apologies that she didn’t hear, because something was wrong with her headset. Now, you feel sorry for her, and hey, she apologized!
Then she rolls on with the pitch of some 75% off deal in Orlando that you are magically qualified for. You try to interrupt her because you are not interested.
She can’t hear you because her headset is not working. You can’t hang up because you are polite, and civil, and you have this relationship going.
People! It’s a recording. It’s all a recording.
I’ve had three junk phone calls from the same bright cheery actress, and they all start with a pause, and the exclamation about faulty headsets. What is America coming to if we can’t find reliable headsets?
Perhaps another tactic is to just lay the phone down and let the scene play out with no response. If there are no sales, then this “new” approach will die out.
I can’t do that. I must yell, and continue to yell, that her headset is malfunctioning.
Another Sisyphus myth in the making.
