Whew, it's FINALLY over! I had my written test for the NYS EMT-B cert on Thursday and it went just fine. We won't get our scores until mid-January but I have no reason to believe I did badly on it.
I have my week-nights back. YIPPEE! But I am going to miss my classmates. We had a really good class, with a good range of personalities, and we tended to get along well with each other overall. They're great people and I am glad to know they are in ambulances in the area in case I ever need one to help keep me breathing!
Unrelatedly, I just have to share these two recent telemarketing experiences with you. Both were "existing relationship" calls. This means that if you are doing business in any way shape or form with a company, they can call you to try to sell you more stuff, even if you are on the FCC's Do-Not-Call list. These though are my favorite kind because I can really mess with their heads.
I got my first from the bank with my mortgage. They said they wanted to know if I wanted to open an equity line of credit. I told them if they did in fact give me one, it would be for $40. I haven't had my mortgage much more than a year. The poor misguided soul on the other end didn't know what to do. People generally don't say that they are in fact not credit-worthy (at least not for an LOC) and so it isn't in their training to deal with such obvious assertions (really, if my bank had given me an LOC at this point in my loan, I would have had to question their judgment). So she said, well, maybe in two years. I said, "Yeah, call me then."
Bye-bye!
Next was my ISP, who also does CATV and other such things. They wanted to offer me 6 mos. of cable for $40/month. They are trained as you can imagine to handle questions like "Well, what's the price June of next year then?" They have a long script designed to find ways to get people to take the bait. Anything not on the script leads to confusion and silence. My reply was "I don't like TV."
Silence.
You'd've thought I just told her I was a Martian just here on vacation and I was going back soon, so it didn't matter anyway.
After regaining her balance she suggested that well, the specialty channels are nice, like the sports channels like ESPN and so on. (For women I am sure they suggest something else, like Lifetime or whatever. These people are beyond predictable.) I told her I thought watching televised sports was a waste of time and TV was also, in a general sense, a waste of time.
[Now, this is only partly true. There is some TV I like to watch. Sat. AM cartoons for example, which are a lot better than nearly anything else aired these days on TV. I also like news-- sometimes. And occasionally there is something interesting to watch in prime time. And yes, every now and then (like once every 6 months) there MAY be a sporting event I stop to look at. I never, however, schedule time to do so. It will be because I stumbled across it flipping my way to something else (such as the VCR feed channel so I can play something I actually want to watch-- take a guess-- The Prisoner, Space:1999, Blackadder re-runs, you get the idea). However for 95% of the time, it's all utter dreck, a complete waste of time.]
She didn't know what to do. More silence. Then she said, well, if you ever change your mind, call us back. I said I sure would.
Have a nice day!
At least I have the satisfaction of knowing that there is a good chance that "this call will be reviewed for training purposes," and it will give someone a new project to work on next week. Their task will be to find some way to convince people like me that CATV is worth the time and cost.
I feel for them, as they certainly have their work cut out.
I have my week-nights back. YIPPEE! But I am going to miss my classmates. We had a really good class, with a good range of personalities, and we tended to get along well with each other overall. They're great people and I am glad to know they are in ambulances in the area in case I ever need one to help keep me breathing!
Unrelatedly, I just have to share these two recent telemarketing experiences with you. Both were "existing relationship" calls. This means that if you are doing business in any way shape or form with a company, they can call you to try to sell you more stuff, even if you are on the FCC's Do-Not-Call list. These though are my favorite kind because I can really mess with their heads.
I got my first from the bank with my mortgage. They said they wanted to know if I wanted to open an equity line of credit. I told them if they did in fact give me one, it would be for $40. I haven't had my mortgage much more than a year. The poor misguided soul on the other end didn't know what to do. People generally don't say that they are in fact not credit-worthy (at least not for an LOC) and so it isn't in their training to deal with such obvious assertions (really, if my bank had given me an LOC at this point in my loan, I would have had to question their judgment). So she said, well, maybe in two years. I said, "Yeah, call me then."
Bye-bye!
Next was my ISP, who also does CATV and other such things. They wanted to offer me 6 mos. of cable for $40/month. They are trained as you can imagine to handle questions like "Well, what's the price June of next year then?" They have a long script designed to find ways to get people to take the bait. Anything not on the script leads to confusion and silence. My reply was "I don't like TV."
Silence.
You'd've thought I just told her I was a Martian just here on vacation and I was going back soon, so it didn't matter anyway.
After regaining her balance she suggested that well, the specialty channels are nice, like the sports channels like ESPN and so on. (For women I am sure they suggest something else, like Lifetime or whatever. These people are beyond predictable.) I told her I thought watching televised sports was a waste of time and TV was also, in a general sense, a waste of time.
[Now, this is only partly true. There is some TV I like to watch. Sat. AM cartoons for example, which are a lot better than nearly anything else aired these days on TV. I also like news-- sometimes. And occasionally there is something interesting to watch in prime time. And yes, every now and then (like once every 6 months) there MAY be a sporting event I stop to look at. I never, however, schedule time to do so. It will be because I stumbled across it flipping my way to something else (such as the VCR feed channel so I can play something I actually want to watch-- take a guess-- The Prisoner, Space:1999, Blackadder re-runs, you get the idea). However for 95% of the time, it's all utter dreck, a complete waste of time.]
She didn't know what to do. More silence. Then she said, well, if you ever change your mind, call us back. I said I sure would.
Have a nice day!
At least I have the satisfaction of knowing that there is a good chance that "this call will be reviewed for training purposes," and it will give someone a new project to work on next week. Their task will be to find some way to convince people like me that CATV is worth the time and cost.
I feel for them, as they certainly have their work cut out.
posted by Matt Campbell at 3:53 PM
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