There’s No Telling a Telemarketer

It’s Saturday morning, and I’m on the phone with a young woman doing market research on a seniors community/golf course/nature preserve just north of Ventura.

She tells me it would be off Highway 133.

“Don’t you mean Highway 33?” I ask.

“It’s 133 in the script,” says the woman, who is calling from St. George, Utah.

“It’s 33 on the road signs,” I reply.

She goes on. The land is near Canada Larga Road, she says.

“It’s not Canada, as in Canada goose,” I interrupt. “It’s Can-yada.”

Can-yada?

“Like Can-yada Dry Ginger Ale,” I explain.

She doesn’t laugh, because she’s a professional telemarketer trying to do her job, she’s got a script to follow, and she’s got a supervisor who listens in to monitor quality assurance--that is, to make sure employees aren’t phoning home, begging for bus fare back. Besides, she’s called people who are not merely puckish, but downright abusive, as their coffee brews on a Saturday morning.

I sympathize with her. For a mercifully brief time, I too was a telemarketer and know that those voices pitching credit cards and long-distance services belong to flesh-and-blood human beings, not machines (except in those aggravating instances when they belong to machines and not flesh-and-blood human beings).

In any event, telemarketing is a tough way to earn not much of a living, and it might soon get tougher.

Under a bill by state Sen. Liz Figueroa, a Democrat from Fremont, consumers could register on a state-administered Do Not Call list. They would pay $10 the first year and $5 each succeeding year for a scam-free, blessedly silent phone. Telemarketers who call anyway would face prosecution.

Because I’ve done time on both ends of the line, I have strong opinions on this matter--and would be happy to rush them to you for three easy payments of just $19.99.

Pardon me. What I meant to say was: A Do Not Call list is a fine idea, but it’s sad that we should have to pay $10 for the privilege of not being harassed. It’s like paying $10 to not have ink squirted on your shirt or a mackerel stuffed in your mailbox.

More significantly, a Do Not Call list is one more burden for those honest telemarketers who aren’t busy collecting for phony charities or stealing dimes from old people.

I barely hung on as a telemarketer for Time-Life Books. I got sworn at, screamed at and hung up on. My supervisor, a Mrs. Carnival, told me I read the script with real feeling, but apparently my dramatic flair didn’t help. The guy in the next cubicle sold the 411 operator a complete set of Time-Life Under the Sea and I couldn’t move a single unit. My headphones were my millstones; rejection was the butter on my daily bread.

After a few weeks, even journalism looked like an attractive alternative.

The worst moment was when a man tried to stop me mid-pitch, choking out the words: “Have to go . . “

“And best of all,” I continued with real feeling, “one dollar from every purchase goes to the Pop Warner Junior Football League!”

” . . . to a funeral,” he said.

That wasn’t in the script, and nothing throws a telemarketer like something that isn’t in the script.

Even so, my Saturday morning friend conducted herself with aplomb.

Asking for a Yes-No-Don’t Know answer on whether the county needs another golf course, she bore up when I quoted Mark Twain about golf being “a good walk spoiled.”

“On the other hand, a lot of people around here are crazy for it,” I added.

“So is that a Yes, a No, or a Don’t Know?”

“It’s none. It’s a ‘That Depends.’ ”

“Can I mark that down as a Don’t Know?”

“Well, that depends. Can I give you that on a scale of one to five?”

“No,” she sighed. “Just Yes, No, or Don’t Know.”

I told her she was a good telemarketer and did the job with real feeling.

If I’d known about Liz Figueroa’s Do Not Call bill, I would have asked her if she’d pay 10 bucks to never have to talk to me again: Yes, No, or Don’t Know?

Steve Chawkins is a Times staff writer. His e-mail address is steve.chawkins@latimes.com.