Your Words Burn the Air Like the Names of Candy Bars

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All I’m going to tell you is that when you need a job you’ll do things you didn’t quite expect. You know that I was an evictress, and that I worked retail in the past. When I first moved to Seattle I had a tiny bit of money and no prospects, unless you count getting mad booty, which always happens when you move to a new town. Unless it doesn’t. Condolences. Well, there was the Canadian corn salesman who kicked me out of his van after he discovered all I wanted was his hot, slightly butter-scented body. Ah, well.

I flipped through the want-ads daily in between moodily riding the bus making myself damn deaf listening to Rocket From the Crypt and Louder Than Bombs. One day there was an ad up for a “telephone interviewer.” HMM, curious. Was this telemarketing? Not quite. It was calling people up and asking them nosy questions twenty hours a week. One job was for King County Health or something and involved me asking people both how many times a week they ate vegetables (“Hmm, five.” LIES.) and how many firearms they had in their house (“NONE OF YOUR GOTDAM BIDNESS THIS ARE AMURICA COLD DEAD HANDS ETC.” oic.).

There was a man who got hired at the same time as me, my oh my I would look at him and drool would literally form in my mouth. He could not have been more my type had I drawn him myself. He was an artist and a recent transplant from the Midwest, and like me, needed a crappy job to tide him over until he found something more satisfying and fulltime. I followed him around. I hung on every word as he talked about his next project or painting. He found out I was 17 to his 25. WAH WAH WAAAAH, thank you for playing.

But I hung in there and we started hanging out together, having lunch or exploring Seattle together. I heard his sad story about his rilly terrible break up with his clingy anorexic girlfriend and how he wasn’t looking for a serious relationship. Awesome, neither was I. He was with me the day I turned 18–we got a slice of chocolate cake together at a cafe that was where Rosebud is now. What was it called then? I had a glass of merlot courtesy of my fake ID.

A few weeks later, we were at Ileen’s. of all places (neither of us liked sports, but the beer flowed nicely there). It is important for you to know that I have always been the Sultana of Subtlety. Once when I seduced a man in a field I just basically peeled off all my clothes and stared at him until he did the same. I ensnared a high school fling by calling him up and saying, “Hey, come over, let’s have sex.” I KNOW, Smooth Operator was written about ME, right. Well, this artist guy and I were staring at each other across the table and I said, “Say, when’s the last time you had sex?” GOOOOAL!

But the one thing I really, really remember about that job was that there was a lifer there. Most telephone type people burn out quickly, but she was in it to win it. She placed one call after another like a robot, and hung up after rejections and moved on to the next call like it was all nothing. I felt bad about bothering people, though I did get the occasional “OH BOY I LOVE SURVEYS!”. She was terse and weird and had a long-ass I Dream of Jeanie ponytail, but muddy brown. And the kicker was that she kept a picture of Commander Data on her desk. Not Brent Spiner, Commander Data. It was kind of soft focus, too.

I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

29 thoughts on “Your Words Burn the Air Like the Names of Candy Bars”

  1. I’ve worked telemarketing twice (once where we used paper fucking lists and once where everything was automated on a computer and it was really obvious some people got better lists than others) and both times I burnt out really fast. It is not the job for me, even though it pays crazy well. However, both jobs there were also really really weird people (only wears clothing made of leather! stalks the streets of Chicago at night trying to get hassled so he has an excuse to club folks with hidden brass knuckles! “paints” using markers and water and a straw!) who had done telemarketing for fucking ever. They were really good at it, the job was a good fit for them. They were also really, incredibly weird. Just… “off.”

  2. HO HO HO! the telemarking jobs of Christmases past! I know thee well.

    WElll, let me tell you a little story. I worked in a telemarketing job for about 2 of the longest weeks of my life when I was 18 going on 12. I was working on earning enough money to make my car payment. (Thank you, Nissan Finance, for agreeing to give the 18 year old Krumpy an auto loan for a car retailing at $13,000 in 1988! It was super fun.)

    My favorite was the people who answered the phones. One guy said, “just a minute” and then spent about 10 seconds getting situated and, I swear to Ghod, he started to work out or pleasure himself while I ready my stupid-ass script. Mmmm-hmm. So, instead of hanging up, I just kept reading because I thought it was kind of funny. Also, I couldn’t be sure that the sounds in the background weren’t weights. And, now that I think about it, I think he ended up buying one of the coupon books (priced at $49.95, valued at up to over $500!).

    What we won’t do for money. And sex or something like it.

  3. Telemarketing. Not telemark. Although, I wonder what telemarkers get paid to ski…. Prolly not to many corporate sponsors for that sport.

  4. Ahhhh…the memories! Only I did telemarketing in my 20’s! It was a part-time spliff that I worked after 8 hours at my other job (I needed the money)!

    We called people who filled out those crapass WIN A FREE TRIP TO THE BAHAMAS entry forms at 7-Eleven or some sort. The people were all like OMFGBBQ I WON until they found out they had to buy some shitty cookware first.

    I did that crap for quite a while and surprisingly, the people I worked with were actually fairly normal, except the really obese woman who hated everyone.

    Good times!

  5. i worked telemarketing for one hour when I was in high school. It was selling Kirby vacuum cleaners. I did three calls, all of them were horrid, and I just said, I can’t do this and went to cry. lol

    Luckily, I was working for my ex’s mom, so it was ok. It’s not like they planned paying well. ;p

    I don’t know how they conned me into trying in the first place. Calling people has always made me hella nervous. I barely like doing it at work now, but at least if I call people, they have called me first, so it’s not like they’re not expecting it.

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