She was watching
and trying to be certain of what that TSR had been
doing, when she finished writing in her notebook and
looked around. She seemed to realize immediately that the game was over. At the same time, a supervisor
came over to them. "Alright you two, in the office now." The materials supervisor began to explain everything, ending with, "I caught her erasing records of her calls while writing down addresses! There have been a lot of calls dismissed improperly, I bet from her station. Aren't you going to do anything?" The supervisor was strangely unshaken by any of it, instead beginning to chastise the materials handler for having been in the autodialer room instead of passing out scratch paper to the TSR's. "If you'd done your job, she wouldn't have needed to write in a notebook. TSR's need the scratch paper to write down credit card verification numbers until they get the chance to enter it into the computer. And do you really have any proof that she did anything wrong or are you just trying to cause trouble, be a hero or something? After all, the TSR's don't have assigned seats, who's to say the autodialer foul-ups weren't just a coincidence? Accidents happen." At that, with an almost sadistic look, the supervisor dismissed her back to work with written reprimands ranging from trespassing to antagonizing a co-worker. "And now to deal with the cause of some of this annoyance. First off, what did you do to get her after you? Sloppy, very sloppy."
Now, ready for Captioning?
She sat down in her cubicle
and looked around. In the work area sat a large
book, a blank-screened computer, and a
telephone with a tape recorder and headset attatched.
The other 63 cubicles were identical. Her new boss
gave the expected "motivational speech" along with
some admonishments for several TSR's. At that,
several supervisors appeared and took them to the
office. Then the buzzer sounded, announcing that the
first call would be put through in one minute. Just
enough time to put on the headset and open the
reference book.
As calls came in, she reached
various parts in the script before hearing "I'm
not interested, goodbye." After a few calls where
she was cut off not even halfway through the script,
the supervisors took interest. She was told to
variously "Be more serious" "Be perky" "Be assertive"
"Be friendly" and several other contradictory things.
She got through her shift until break, with only
three sales. "Maybe they'll lay off me now, even
though everyone else has more sales on the
board." Instead, a supervisor asked her to come
outside for a moment. In the smoking area, she
fought waves of nausea from not only the cigarettes
but the harsh words of the supervisor. She could
only nod in agreement, trying not to cry. As she sat
down at her cubicle, the buzzer went off again and
she had to hurry to be ready. On the computer screen
appeared the name, address, phone number, and type of
credit card held by the person she was speaking
to. She used this information to confirm the few
sales she made and curse those who hung up on her.
By the end of her shift, she was terribly upset and
frustrated by not only the customers but by the cruel
treatment the TSR's recieved when they didn't make
sales. The sign at the front of the room was
constantly pointed out;
TSR's are a dime-a-dozen,
closers are what matter! She'd have
to make people buy if she wanted to work here.
"No one wants to buy something when they were
eating and interrupted by the sales pitch. Just
because the stupid automatic dialer always seems to
call whatever time zone is having dinner, that's no
reason for everyone to yell at me! If they knew what
information I have about everyone I call, they'd
never be so mean." She was so upset by this
point that a horrible thought was occuring to her.
She wasn't quite sure how to implement her plan
without getting caught... Until the day she
accidentally hit the wrong button dismissing a call.
"The computer shows that I never called them. No evidence at all..." The next day
she brought a small notebook to work with her. Every so often, she'd write something down in it, carefully hiding from the supervisor. Once in a while she'd
flip to the back of the book and angrily scrawl
information from the computer screen and hit
the combination of keys that would erase records of
her call. Then seemingly random terrible things
began happening to people who lived nearby. People
far away recieved horrible things in the mail. A few people had even died from what appeared to be pranks
gone horribly wrong. Yet there seemed to be no
connection, no way to solve the cases, no evidence at all... Until the new telemarketing materials supervisor noticed something not quite right in the autodialer system. No one had payed much attention before, but the new girl was a bit overzealous in learning how things worked. In curiosity, she had spent an hour in the off-limits dialer room watching how the system ran. She noticed that several calls appeared to be put through to a TSR is section 5, but no record of those calls was made. "That's weird, how can that happen?" So she went out to the sales floor to see if she noticed that TSR doing anything strange. When she saw her get out the notebook after improperly dismissing a call,
things became clear to her. "That's the
connection! It has to be!"
have been burned by the evils of telemarketing since 3/5/98! Last update: 7/21/98.
Links please.
Lyrics of the misheard variety.
Parodies.
The other lovely story.
Safe at home.
