ANDRE BEGIN

It happens when you least expect it. Whether it’s dinner time, the kids’ bath time, sleeping in on a Saturday morning… It’s the dreaded call from a phone solicitor.

Despite the measures we have in place to try to get out of the path of telemarketers, there are still a few slippery ones who seem to get through.

At first, it was easy to ignore their calls since the call display would show absurd numbers like 000-000-0000, 888-888-8888 or 123-456-7890. I would let those calls go to voice mail. Sometimes they left messages, sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they called back, sometimes they didn’t.

However, some phone solicitors seem to be ahead of the game now, technologically speaking, since the call display feature shows the call as coming from within my own area code.

To get to the bottom of the mystery, the first times that happened, when I tried to call the number afterwards, either the number was out of service or the number belonged to someone who isn’t actually a phone solicitor.

What was more annoying was that when they did call again it was from a different number, but still within my own area code.

The fact of the matter is that I really cannot get too angry with phone solicitors.

I used to be one, many decades ago, during my first summer job.

I totally accept that karma is a bitch and it’s probably my payback time for all the people I may have disturbed that summer at dinner time, the kids’ bath time, or sleeping in on a Saturday morning.

However, it was a much different time, long before call display, long before sophisticated call centre technology.

It wasn’t so many years ago that we had to call Alexander Graham Bell when we experienced technical issues, but it was a while back nonetheless.

Our call centre was a small room with four very average phones, two long tables, four chairs, a phone book and a dividing wall in the middle.

One sheet of paper contained the speech we were to deliver to our interlocutor. On another sheet there was some additional wording to offer based on the questions our clients might ask.

By today’s standards, it was primitive, but it worked.

It didn’t take me long to realize that one of the goals of the job was to make the speech sound natural, light and conversational, as opposed to sounding like I was reading from a written speech. To my surprise, it’s a life lesson that still applies today in my work as a screenwriter, in trying to ensure that the words I write would flow naturally when interpreted by an actor.

Most people were pretty nice when they said “not interested”. There were a few that were less than cordial, but that was part of the job (…another life lesson: accepting rejection gracefully.)

I think I surprised everyone in my ability to shake off rejection and to seamlessly move on to the next client. I guess my optimism prevailed in knowing that there were plenty more pages in the phone book and more people to call.

That being the case, when I get a call from a phone solicitor, I try not to lose sight of the fact that they are first and foremost people, like I was and my colleagues were, just trying to make a few bucks.

It is difficult sometimes, especially when a telemarketer is supremely tenacious, but I try to be as fair and as compassionate as possible.

I still refuse to buy anything that anyone is trying to sell me over the phone but there is no need to be nasty. A simple, “not interested – thank you – goodbye” is all it takes.

In trying to exercise kindness, compassion and patience with phone solicitors, I hope I am able to restore balance in the universe and that my karmic payback will soon be over.

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Sincere thanks for reading!
Have a great day,
André