I grabbed the local Asbury Park Press newspaper and circled jobs that seemed appealing: farmhand, water boy at a restaurant, a roofer—lots of good options. One job in the paper stood out: “Enjoy talking to people? Get paid to do it as a telemarketer!” I seemed eminently qualified for this: I do enjoy talking to people. I did want to get paid to do it!
Plus, wasn’t this basically acting? I could pretend to be whoever I wanted on the phone, and the person on the other end of the line would have no idea that I wasn’t really a pregnant lady named Sandra (pi r squared) selling stuff in my downtime. I also did have some prior experience.
As a weird child, I used to look forward to telemarketers disturbing our family dinners. It exhilarated me. The phone would ring while Grandpa was in the middle of another story about Gandhi (zzzzz1), and I’d race over to answer as my parents would yell out, “It’s a marketing call, don’t pick up!”
I’d always pick up. “Hello, is Mrs. Modi there, please?” a telemarketer would say. I’d pause briefly to put on my best high-pitched little-kid voice and say, “Mommy is sleeping… She hurt her head… There’s a fire.” They usually hung up right away.
Sometimes the telemarketer would have a particularly long-winded introduction before asking, “… So may I speak with Mr. Modi, please?” That gave me a chance to sigh loudly before gravely mumbling, “I wish you could speak with Mr. Modi. We all wish we could. He passed away yesterday.”
“Why do you do these weird things?” my mom would ask.
The answer was the same compulsion as fourth-grade me making up stories during show-and-tell: entertaining (myself and) others, improvisation, making people laugh. I got all that just from answering telemarketers’ calls, so why not become one?
I went in for an interview at the company’s office in a gorgeous New Jersey strip mall, nestled between a pizza place and a pharmacy. Nine other prospective employees were also there.
The guy in charge of hiring looked like Big Bird from Sesame Street, but if Sesame Street was in a tough neighborhood. (Also, Big Bird doesn’t undress you with his eyes.)
The group interview questions were a mere formality. “Raise ya hand if youz ever used a computer. Uh-rite. Raise ya hand if youz are familiar with the telephone. Uh-rite.” Skeezy Big Bird hired us all on the spot.
On my first day I found out I’d be calling people on behalf of some sort of policemen’s organization to ask for donations. This threw a significant wrench in my plan to play different characters on the calls. It would be one thing to create a fake persona if we were selling a timeshare or magazine subscriptions, but a policemen’s association? That sounded serious. I didn’t want to act my way into an “impersonating an officer” charge.
I’d have to test the waters slowly and be myself to start. The giant room was filled with rows of white plastic folding tables—two computer stations and headsets atop each. I was shown to my vacant seat and introduced myself to a portly guy named Peter, who sat on my left. My new desk buddy had a large hearing aid on his left ear that the headset went over. An auto-dialer did the work. All we had in front of us was the person’s name and our script.
Every call followed an eerily familiar pattern. Ring ring. Long pause.
“……………… Hell… -low?”
A two-hundred-year-old lady would answer.
“Hi! Is this Mildred?”
Mildred’s voice perked up. She shouted loudly into the receiver.
“YES! HELLO? WHO’S THIS?!”
“Hi Mildred, my name is Kalpen. I’m calling on behalf of the Super-Helpful Policemen’s Organization. How are you doing this evening?”
“YES! HELLO! SO NICE TO HEAR FROM YOU!”
If you recall from my Grandpa and Bubbe stories: I love old people. They’ve experienced things. They’re chock-full of wisdom that too many of us take for granted. Lots of old people live by themselves. Sometimes one old person takes care of another old person. Their kids and grandkids don’t call as much as they wish they would. Their old friends are no longer around, and they lose new friends every year because they’re so old. Sometimes they’re lonely.
Skeezy Big Bird knew that lonely old people wouldn’t mind talking to an eighteen-year-old telemarketer calling on behalf of the Super-Helpful Policemen’s Organization. My job, he explained, was to follow the script and keep Mildred on the line, chatting with her about all the super-helpful work the Super-Helpful Policemen’s Organization supposedly did.
“How do you feel about the police in your neighborhood, Mildred?”
“I love the police. We should do more to support them so that we don’t all wind up raped and murdered.”
“Actually, Mildred, I’m so glad to hear you say that because you can do more to support them! I’m calling today to ask for your help in donating one hundred dollars toward the Super-Helpful Policemen’s Organization Fund.”
“Oh, I feel so bad. You see, I’m on a fixed income. I wish I could give one hundred dollars. I just don’t have that kind of money.”
Mildred didn’t call me an asshole for asking for money. She didn’t pretend she was a child stuck in a fire. The truly sad part was that even after explaining she couldn’t give me the cash, Mildred didn’t hang up. She was lonely. Why disconnect if there was someone willing to talk to her?
Skeezy Big Bird told us what to say when the person lingered. “Well, we understand you don’t have one hundred dollars. The police keep us so safe… Maybe a fifty-dollar donation would be easier for you?”
“Oh, I really wish I could,” Mildred would reply. “It’s just that my Social Security check doesn’t last all month. Since my husband passed away, it’s been hard.”
This was so awful—and it was happening hundreds of times a day in this hollow room full of cheap plastic folding tables in a Garden State strip mall. Rows of telemarketers soliciting money from a bunch of Mildreds who couldn’t afford it. Each call would continue until someone eventually hung up or we succeeded in getting the Mildred to give any amount of money, usually five dollars. For someone on a fixed income, five dollars can be the price of a couple of meals.
This acting gig was starting to suck and it had barely been forty-five minutes. I didn’t want to ask people for money, so I’d try to get off the phone as quickly as possible if the Mildred didn’t enthusiastically offer up a $100 donation right away. I wasn’t going to be a particularly good telemarketer, but I didn’t want to be a terrible human.
Sixty minutes into the first shift, a break-time bell rang and a small guy in an oversized suit emerged from a back office. This was Skeezy Big Bird’s boss. He was like a sad version of Joe Pesci from My Cousin Vinny. With considerable effort, Sad Joe Pesci hoisted himself up on one of the folding desks and in a thunderous voice launched into a motivational speech like they do in those Wall Street movies. “Every-bahdy! Pause ya’ comp-yootahz and listen up!”
Portly Pete removed his headset, adjusted his hearing aid, and angrily whispered to me, “What did he say? I can’t hear shit!”