Spinning Yarns

So, I’m sitting at home, watching the rain go by, and this beautiful rainbow across the clouds, eating dinner, and generally liking life—when the phone rings.

Ordinarily, I’d be inclined to ignore the phone at a time like this, but for some reason, I decided to pick it up.

Argh. A Sprint salesman.

I was at first inclined to just say, “Not interested, go away” and hang up; however, inspired by the telemarketer-hosing game my roommate posted the URL for the other week, I decided to play a little.

“Is Mister or Missus Fromberger there?” he asks.

This particular drone has one of those voices that sort of sounds like he’s got a big piece of celery rammed in between his teeth and gums, he overpronounces his syllables and he says “sir” no less than twice in almost every sentence he utters.

“Which one?” I inquire politely.

“Either is fine,” he asserts.

“No, I mean which Missus Fromberger? There are at least two. Maybe more, but I lose count.”

He pauses. I think I get at least a point for that. But he’s prepared for this, and he gives me the line about speaking to “whomever is in charge of the decisions about the phone line.”

“I’ll go see if she’s home,” I say, and quickly put the phone down (hard). I call out “dear? Honey? Are you up there?” and go stomping upstairs, leaving the phone on the table.

Now, at this point, I know it’s a little dicey, because he might not wait if I leave him there for too long, but I want to make him hang there a bit. So I shuffle some things around loudly, and run up and down the stairs a few times, talking to myself in different voices. About 135 seconds total, and then I grab up the phone, drop it on the table from about six inches up, then pick it up again.

“Uh, I guess she’s not here. Can I take a message?”

I’m liking life here—I’ve already wasted almost three minutes of his life, and he still thinks there’s something going on here.

“Well, sir, are you responsible for decisions about the phone line?” he asks. He’s still pretty even-tempered, so I figure I have to work harder.

“Sure. I’ll be Missus Fromberger tonight. That sounds like fun.”

He launches into his spiel, and “sir” has been replaced with “Mister Fromberger” (despite the fact that I told him I’m MISSUS Fromberger. Some people.) I turned up the volume a little bit, put the phone down next to me and continued eating my dinner. He rambled on for a good 75-80 seconds, before getting to the point where he says—not asks, mind you, SAYS—”So, let’s get you set up for Sprint service right away.” At this point, I pick up the phone, and say, “Thank you, but we’re actually not interested.”

“Mister Fromberger, do you mind if I ask you who your current long-distance provider is?”

I can’t think of anything to do with this one that wouldn’t get a hangup, so I answer truthfully, “AT&T.” He asks me how much I spend on long-distance per month. I answer truthfully, “On average, less than five dollars”.

He launches into the spiel about how much money I could save with Sprint. Real brain trust. About the only way I could save any more money on long-distance is if they paid ME to make long-distance calls. But I let him ramble on. This is a really good one, at least two minutes all by itself. He talks about all kinds of stuff, although I can’t make much of it out because the phone is lying on the table again, and I’m waiting for the key phrase that marks the end of his speech.

“… and so, keeping that in mind, Mister Fromberger … ” the phone babbles. I pick it back up. He again proposes I switch to Sprint.

“I’m sorry,” I say, “But we’re just not interested. We’re very happy with our current service.”

This earns me a sigh, although only a faint one. Worth points, I think. He goes into a spiel about how their customer service was top rated by some big yuk firm, ya ya ya, wank wank wank. I put the phone back down and let him spin for a while longer. I hear something about burying lines in the ground, snowstorms…quality…customer satisfaction. Finally, he spools back in.

” … and so, keeping that in mind, Mister Fromberger … ”

I pick up the phone again, but I let him totally finish his rambling first, eating up precious seconds.

“Thank you, but we are QUITE satisfied with AT&T.”

“Do you mind,” he inquires, being a good little sales-droid and getting some research data while he’s at it, “if I inquire why you are so happy with AT&T?”

“Quite simple,” I said. And then, I felt a good rant coming on, so I just kinda started in slowly. “I frankly find this particular type of marketing reprehensible—indeed, one might go so far as to call it a festering blight, hanging like a tumor from our society. No, I could not, in good conscience, give my custom to a company which markets in such a thoughtless, intrusive and totally inappropriate manner.”

“Well, sir, di…”

“…IN FACT,” I interrupted, warming up to the rant, “you, Mister Salesdroid Sir, have succeeded in one thing quite remarkably—and that is guaranteeing that THIS household will never EVER buy service from your company. You want satisfied customers? Leave them the hell alone! If I never hear from Sprint again as long as I live, it will be about ten million years too soon. I would rather CUT OFF my OWN BALLS and eat them stewed in rancid sauerkraut than EVER have any dealings with Sprint ever again! Now, pray do tell me, which part of ‘not interested’ did you fail to understand?”

I heard a kind of strangled sound on the other end of the phone that I am prepared to swear was a poorly-muffled “goddammit!”, but to his credit, he did manage t read the concluding portion of the script, albeit at a considerably higher speed.

“ThankyouMisterFrombergerhaveaGoodNightandpleasekeeupsinmindinthefuture.”

“Oh, I will,” I assured him. “I surely will.”

*click*

Filed by Michael at 19:39 under Personal, Story
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