How many times has this happened to you?  Picture this:  You’ve just gotten home from work, and it’s been another long day.  You’re tired, and your feet hurt.  You sit down and kick off your shoes, and are just beginning to unwind.  .  .  and the phone rings.

You get up from your comfy-chair and go to the phone.  Your caller id is telling you that the call is from yet another of those d#@%ed telemarketers!  You are sooo tired of getting these calls!  When will they stop calling?

You pick up the handset and immediately let it fall back into the cradle.  The ringing stops.  There!  You showed ’em!  They’d never dare to call back now.

You smile quietly to yourself and go back to your comfy-chair.  You put your tired feet up and.  .  .  Riiiiinnngg!  Those ba#@%rds!  How dare they ruin your hard-earned and well-deserved respite?

You figure they’ll just keep bothering you until you put a stop to this nonsense.  From here it can go any of several different ways.  For instance:

A.  You go to the phone and answer/hang up again.  Why don’t they get the hint?

B.  You let it ring until your answering machine picks up.  (Of course they’re too cowardly to leave you an actual message, so they just hang up - or they do leave a message, rambling on and on about blah, blah, blah, using up all of the allotted time and tying up your phone line.)  Why don’t they get the hint?

C.  You figure they’ll just keep calling until you actually answer, so you go to the phone.  Another glance at the caller id confirms that you don’t recognize the company name - unless it’s familiar from all the times they’ve called you over the last few months.  “Hello?”

“Hi, is this (your name here)?”  Sometimes you’ll say, “Wrong number” and hang up.  Or you’ll just hang up.  Why don’t they get the hint?  Or maybe you’re in one of those rare (after a hard day) moods, and so you ask, “Who’s calling?”  You know you don’t recognize the voice, although the caller’s tone implies that he/she’s your best friend, calling you by either your entire first name, which you don’t use, or worse yet, the most-common nickname for your first name, which you never use.

Sometimes you’ll say that (your name here) is “out”, whereupon the caller will inevitably start asking all kinds of asinine questions, like when (your name) will be back or will (your name) be home on Saturday or when’s the best time to call back for (your name)?  You mutter something non-committal, or “I don’t know”.  The caller then thanks you and mercifully lets you go back to your relaxing after your long day.  Or you just hang up before they get the chance.

The biggest problem with any of the above scenarios is that it is likely to be replayed the next day (or maybe the following) and at least a couple more times next week, and maybe again the week after that.  You might not hear from that same company for a few months, but then, for some reason, they start calling again!  Why don’t they get the hint?

You might receive calls from one telemarketing company three or four times a week for two or three weeks running, and that’s just one company!  By the time you include all of the companies who get large percentages of their new and/or repeat business in this way, it’s enough to make you crazy!  No wonder we’re getting so many calls!

Now let’s examine this same type of scene from the other side of the phone.

“Tracy” is a kind, warm, generous, courteous individual who works full time but is having trouble making ends meet.  Tracy’s family depends on Tracy’s income to put food on their table and a roof over their heads, so Tracy needs to work a second job - and is delighted that a reputable company (which provides valuable, genuine benefits in the form of goods and/or services to many other hard-working, responsible individuals) has offered a position wherein Tracy can make the extra money needed to maintain the family’s health and well-being while serving a worthwhile purpose not only to the employer but to the many, many people who will benefit from the company’s products and services.

Tracy has been provided a list of names and phone numbers.  Tracy’s task is to reach as many people as possible, and ask them whether or not they would benefit from what Tracy’s employer has to offer.  Tracy reports to work on time and diligently calls as many numbers from the list as time will allow.  Tracy understands that personal integrity is the key to being the best person Tracy knows how to be, and so besides being on time and dedicated to the task, Tracy is polite and courteous on the phone, realizing that the people at the other end are also hard-working, dedicated individuals who have just spent their own long day at work.

Tracy calls a number from the list.  The phone rings two or three times, and then Tracy can hear the phone being picked up - and then the line goes dead.  Did the person accidentally drop the phone?  (Don’t laugh, it happens.)  Did the person’s cat walk across the phone, stepping on the hang-up button and terminating the connection?  Did the person’s kids trip on the phone cord, pulling it out of the wall?  There’s no way for Tracy to know what happened, or if the person may need medical attention (it’s happened too!) so Tracy dials the number again.

This time, the line is answered by the answering machine.  Tracy doesn’t leave a message*.  Tracy’s instruction is to make a reasonable number of attempts to reach each person on the list, so Tracy, having no way to be sure as to why it was impossible to reach this person on this attempt, makes a note to try the same number again tomorrow and moves on to the next name on the list.  (Sometimes this process is automated; Tracy would press a key for the number to be re-dialed at a later time.)

(*Tracy has been instructed not to leave a message.  In the course of a work-day, a large percentage of Tracy’s calls reach answering machines.  If Tracy were to leave a message on every one, Tracy would spend so much time with this that many fewer calls would be made, thereby greatly reducing the potential number of contacts for the employer.  And a very, very small percentage of these messages will ever be returned, making it a highly cost-ineffective practice.)

This time, the line is answered by a young child:  “Hello?”  Tracy says, “Hello, is (child’s parent’s name) there?” and hears the child repeat, “Hello?”  Tracy now isn’t sure whether or not there’s a problem with the connection, so asks again for the child’s parent.  “Hello?”  Again, Tracy doesn’t know where exactly lies the problem, so tells the child, “I’ll call back another time.”  The child hangs up (evidently having heard that last part).  Tracy, having no way to be sure whether this is the child’s parents’ way of trying to get the phone to stop ringing or the child is just “being a kid”, is obliged to make a note to try that number again in an effort to reach the parent.

Or, the child simply hangs up as Tracy is asking for the intended recipient of the call.  Tracy jots a note to make another attempt.

The point is that kind, warm Tracy, having been given this task as a means of respectable, gainful employment, has no alternative but to keep trying to reach this particular individual until a certain number of attempts have been made, or until the person is actually reached.  That’s Tracy’s job.  Tracy wants to keep this job, for the sake of Tracy’s family’s well-being.  So Tracy will try again the next day, or the following, and again next week.

Tracy tries the next number.  “Hello?” Tracy asks for the person whose name appears on the list, and receives the reply, “That’s me.  I’m not interested in whatever you’re selling.  Don’t call here again.”  Then the line goes dead.

Tracy didn’t even get to explain the reason for the call, but can now make a note not to call that person again.  (Some companies have the capacity to remove that person’s name from future lists, as well - unfortunately, Tracy’s company has no means by which to remove a name from other companies’ lists.)

You see, Tracy has only two options:  (1) Speak (however briefly) with the person whose name appears on the list, or (2) Keep trying.

Tracy’s employer adheres very closely to the laws regarding the “Do Not Call” list, as do most respectable companies who use telemarketing as a means of advertising/marketing, and runs every newly-acquired list of “prospects” through its computer in an effort to make sure the latest inclusions to the “Do Not Call” list do not appear on the calling list given to Tracy.  Even if a person (such as the last person called above) has not chosen to register with the National Do Not Call Registry, Tracy’s employer will try to make sure that person’s name is removed from future “final” calling lists.  After all, it’s a waste of the company’s time to call anyone who has already stated that they have no need nor desire for the company’s product - so it’s a benefit not only to the person, but to the company as well, to be able to use that same minute (more or less) to call someone else who may want to participate in what the company has to offer.  But this only works for the people who make it known that they don’t want to be called again.

So, let’s review:  If you ask them not to call back again, there’s a good chance they won’t.  If you don’t let them know, how will they know?  Telemarketers aren’t mind-readers.  If Tracy had the capacity to know what you’re thinking, over the phone, while you’re hanging up, guess what?  Tracy wouldn’t be a telemarketer, Tracy would be rich and famous!

OK, so Tracy is a warm, kind person to begin with, and may in some ways be an exception (just as most of us are not as grouchy as the call-recipients depicted above).  There are many individuals employed as representatives of telemarketing companies who may lack the sense of social courtesy we’ve found in Tracy.  This, however, does not change the fact that if you ask a reputable company’s telemarketer to remove your name from their list, there is a good chance that you will never hear back from that particular company (and with advancements in technology, the chances are getting better all the time).  And if you do so the first time they call, you will have reduced the number of times you’ll hear from them to ONE.

If you’re among those who feel that answering even one of these calls is just too much, you could try putting a message on your answering machine asking telemarketers to remove your number from their list.  (Be sure your “Telemarketers - don’t call again” line is at the beginning of your out-going message; many telemarketers will listen, if at all, only long enough to make sure they’ve got the right number.)  This isn’t foolproof, of course, but it will greatly reduce the number of incoming calls you’ll continue to get if you do nothing!

And of course, there’s always the National Do Not Call Registry.