It started in Wisconsin. A telemarketer was so disgusted he quit rather than read one of McCain's sleazeball calls about Obama.
NYT columnist Gail Collins wrote about Ted Zoromski in The Confessions of a Phone Solicitor this past Saturday. This is Ted's story:
Zoromski was prepared to interrupt people during their dinner hours to encourage them to vote Republican. But when he got the script saying “you need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge’s home and killed Americans,” he packed it in.
“Even though I was paid to do it, I didn’t feel comfortable,” Zoromski told WKOW-TV.
Now, TPM reports that dozens of phone workers in Indiana have walked off the job.
"We were asked to read something saying [Obama and Democrats] were against protecting children from danger," [one] worker said. "I wouldn't do it. A lot of people left. They thought it was disgusting."
I have my own confession to make. Long ago, when I was desperate for money, I whored myself out in New York city, making calls as Officer Shannon with the Police Athletic League. I called local businesses and sold them ads for the PAL's yearbook, a publication whose entire run would be forever housed in a warehouse somewhere across the river in New Jersey.
I reached the owner of a small bakery, and as I'd been trained, I told him who I was (or wasn't), suggested he'd helped the PAL the previous year (he hadn't), and wondered if maybe he'd like to help the boys and girls buy new equipment and uniforms again this year.
"Sure," the guy said. "How much space did I buy last year?"
"A full page," I lied.
He bought the ad. The full page ad. My commission was something like $125, a fortune at the time. But when it struck me that I'd just sold my soul for a little over 100 bucks, I quit.
People don't take these jobs because they feel a calling (no pun intended). They do it because they're broke and have nothing better.
When you're this desperate, it takes a lot to make you walk. But the McCain campaign found that depth so rancid that not even phone solicitors, people who have few choices, will take the money.
I find this news hopeful. Just this morning, I heard about a woman who worked in the credit rating business and wrote to a colleague last year, "Let's hope we're all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters :-)."
I guarantee this lamprey was making more money than those phone workers, and yet they've shown more class than all the Wall Street blood suckers combined.
And a lot more class than the sacks of shit who are behind John McCain's stinking campaign calls.
3 comments:
And I get the feeling, she's worse than him. And she'll probably be back. He won't.
I had just sold everything I owned - literally, everything I owned other than my clothes - in an attempt to pay that quarter's college tuition. The alumni center would take anyone willing to come in and make phone calls and paid $10/hr. This was for the University of California system in the early nineties, when the UC system was a disaster, with budget issues, rising tuition, frozen admissions, etc. We had a rigid script to read from and had to ask for particular amounts. The first two people I phoned, both of their children had just been denied admission to the UC system. They were outraged that their kids - children of alums - had been turned down and that I was calling to ask for money for a system that had failed them. I couldn't disagree with them.
It went on like that for about another hour, disgruntled alums yelling at me, telling me what I could do with my request for money.
I spent another hour faking phone calls, then walked out and never went back.
I repeat political phone scripts, in monotone, to check out clerks in stores. It seems to have a magical effect on their efficiency. See? There's some good in everything.
Dread
Post a Comment