Ring the phone

My phone rings constantly. Not from potential employers. Not from friends, family or you, whatever category you may be. The caller ID lists them as “Unknown Caller,” or as “Toll-Free call,” but they are machines that call me. On the hour. Sometimes as early as 9 am, other times as late as 6 pm.

Remember when there was a live person on the other end of that call? They were called telemarketers. It it was a brutal job.  Call, after call, after brutal call that ended, more often than not, without a sale and with a new epithet to add to an already healthy collection.

Now it’s a pre-recorded blabber-fest that no one listens to and immediately gets deleted from your voice message system. Some systems are smart enough not to even bother with leaving a message. This machine of automated sophistication makes my phone ring all day.

I wonder who was that marketing brain that came up with telemarketing in the 50’s. I wonder if he ever thought that he would single-handedly be responsible for the extinction of landlines.

Weird thing is that I don’t have a landline. I guess they are now after VoIPs.

If there was ever a time for telemarketers to make a comeback, now is the time. Seriously. There are a bunch of unemployed marketers, creatives, communications people. They would make great telemarketers. They can carry on an interesting conversation, peppered with witty one liners and cool kid words like, “awesome.” They can work from home, from their own VoIP.

And think of all of the others that are home, waiting for the phone to ring, how surprised they’ll be to have an actual voice on the other end. Awesome.