I hate to admit it, but I did a one week stint as a telemarketer back in my early 20's. I was trying to sell magazine subscriptions to people who already had subscribed to some magazine or another. I had a list of people who had a current subscription and I was supposed to try to sell them a 6 magazine bundle at a discounted price. What sucked is that there wasn't a variety of magazines to choose from, it was just the same old 6 magazines you had to push on these poor people.
Plenty of people sounded interested, but when they asked if they could swap out some of the one's they had no interest in for something they might like better, I had to tell them it was just the 6 I'd mentioned. So most people declined. But I couldn't let them off easily (here's the trick most people don't know), you see we were monitored, and we had to keep these people on the phone as long as possible because supposedly the longer you keep someone on the phone, the more likely they are to buy what you're trying to sell. So if they said, "no thanks", then we had to keep pressuring them until they had said 'no' three times. It's a federal law if you're a telemarketer that once the customer has said 'no' three times, you have to hang up. So if you ever get a telemarketer that you don't want to talk to, just say, "no, no, no"... and they will have no choice but to get off the phone with you.
But not many people know this, so they would always keep on talking even though I'd know they weren't interested. There were so many times I'd be sitting there wishing the person would just say 'no' three times so I could let them go, but we weren't allowed to hang up before they had said 'no' the three times. So there I'd be talking to some irate individual who didn't want the 6 stinking magazines I was trying to push on them, and all I wanted was to hear them say 'no' three times so I could stop bothering them.
Needless to say, after I recieved my first check I immediately quit, I hated having to harrass people needlessly. I didn't like telemarketers harrassing me, so I felt bad doing the same to someone else. But finding out that saying 'no' three times forced them off the phone sure came in handy!!!
