Ooooo, child...

The summer after my senior year of high school was a strange time. Somewhat because of all of the mixed emotions that come with graduating high school and the pending move away to college, but mostly because I worked as a telemarketer in the back room of a Popular Portrait Studio. I sold Portrait Packages.

Every weekday at 8am, I’d drive myself to the stripmall in which the studio was located. I’d unlock the front door and, to get to the backroom that served as a makeshift Call Center, I would walk through the creepy, darkened studio rooms messily filled with assorted portrait props. There were huge colorful blocks on which your toddler could lean, enormous Easter baskets in which your toddler could sit, and giant furry teddy bears on which your toddle could drool.

The backroom was more office like, with stained industrial carpeting, cubby desks and scuffed walls. Crookedly hung on one wall was a grid noting how many packages each employee sold. I didn’t know most of the names, because I only worked the morning shift, but since my friend, Jim, who got me the job, was in the afternoon shift, I’m pretty sure most of staff all smoked pot behind the dumpsters behind the store. I suppose marijuana had the effect of dulling the humiliation a telemarketer endured, thereby making it easier to be a salesman, because the afternoon staff’s numbers were much higher than my own.

Since this job, I've worked several call-center type jobs and have found that nothing about this job was in line with how most telemarketing jobs work.

First of all, this “Call Center” was very low-tech. Basically, we sat at a row of four cubbies with regular analog desk phones. I was really let-down to discover that I wouldn’t be able to live out my childhood dreams of speaking into a headset like that pretty lady on the Time Life Video commercials. To record our calls, we used a good old fashioned #2 pencil. We’d right, Decline, Accept, Return or Do Not Call on the short line to the right of the 1980’s computer print-offs of the call list. Also, no one was monitoring my calls, so if I wanted to (which I did), I skip the calling part and would write “Call Back” and leave the work to the afternoon shift. Now that I think of it, maybe this was why the afternoon shift had more sales.

Also, most call centers did not deal with having to solicit from your friends and family. I lived in a small town and the only people we called were in this small town. At least once a day, I would be forced to call someone I knew. If I was feeling particularly responsible, I would make up a name and speak in a british accent. But usually I’d just write, “Do Not Call” on the line next to their name.

And most phone jobs are in large call centers with at least 10 people making calls in one room. My only co-workers at this job consisted of my good friend, Margaret, the girl who could make me laugh harder than anyone I'd ever met and Ms. Edith, the 60-year-old who served as my boss.

Ms. Edith had the voice, laugh and mannerisms of Jackee, the actress who played "Saaaun-dra" on 227. But instead of making witty quips about food, men and her thighs, she'd say things like, “Oooo, child, the kingdom of the heavens has drawn near," and then place a crumpled Jehovah's Witness pamphlet on my desk.

Every day at 10am on the dot, Ms. Josephine would announce, “Ooooo, child, I’m gonna go get a doughnut.” and then waddle out the front door to the Krispy Kreme stand at the Food Lion grocery store next store. For the next two hours, until I left at noon, I’d listen to her slurp on her coffee and smack her lips on her chocolate cake doughnut saying things like, “Oooo, child, you’ve had a bad day? It’s probably because The End is close at hand.” to customers who were trying to politely decline her telephoned offer of a $39.99 portrait package.

Margaret was the only reason I kept this job. She and I would call each other’s personal answering machines and leave funny messages. Or we’d secretly draw Before and After pictures of people who had gone through the Barbizon School of Modeling on the scrap paper we were given to scratch out the math if we sold a package. We also kept a record of names and numbers of funny customers who told us things like, “There’s a naked man in my bushes” so the other person could call them back later for a laugh.

Oddly enough, people weren’t as rude as you’d think they would be. Considering I was making most of my calls between the hours of 8am and 11am, I would say they were downright gracious. The most common response to our Portrait Package Schtick wasn’t “Go Fuck yourself!” It was a simple “No, thank you” or the reply, “I’m not pretty enough to have my portrait taken.” I’m not sure if I would chalk that up to deprecating Southern Charm or low self-esteem.

I really expected that I’d spend most of the day being interrupted by a dial tone. But I was surprised that people actually buy things from telemarketers! Surely, in this day and age, people do not give their credit card information to strangers who solicit them at 8 am. But I was wrong.

I suppose the looming Apocalypse makes people do strange things.