THANKS FOR CALLING, NOW DROP DEAD!

Chelsea Lowe, I'm sure, is a quiet, mild mannered, bleeding heart liberal. She is also a freelance writer who, in the LA Times today, tried to make us all feel bad for our feelings of disgust and animosity towards telemarketers. She tugs at our heartstrings with her tales of getting that telemarketing job when she needed it the most:

“[Telemarketing] supported me through graduate school, an ad agency layoff and a fledgling freelance career. I was unemployed when I started, broke and living in a place I called "the mouse house." “

Aww, is that special. Maybe you should have gotten a degree in something useful instead of comparative theology or under-water basket weaving. Then you could have gotten a real job instead of a harasser-for-hire.

She made her calls for a non-profit organization and was surprised that she was still treated as a pariah when she called to interrupt dinner, like non-profits can do wrong or something. Then we get this little bit berating:

“A little tip: It's unwise to give an organization your address and phone number, then berate the low-level employee into whose hands that information falls. I made note of mean people's numbers with an eye toward some clever revenge. I never carried out these ideas; I just liked knowing I could. Maybe I'm funny that way: Mistreatment seldom brings out my better impulses.”

Two tips, babe. “I was just following orders” didn’t work at Nuremberg and it isn’t going to work here. You make the call, you take the fall. More importantly, was that a threat? So, what you are saying is never help your precious little non-profits, of which I am sure you are so proud of, because they will harass you until you die and then sometime after? Is it too much for us to think that when we help somebody, they won’t turn on us and start harassing us?

Which brings up another point. Not once in her little piece did Chelsea say the calls we get aren’t harassing. She knows better than that – because they are. Everyone, I mean everyone, recognizes these calls as harassment. Yet, the telemarketing cabals are shocked and horrified to find they are hated as human beings. Am I to feel sorry that these people will loose their jobs if the Do Not Call list passes Constitutional muster? I don’t think so. Try acting as considerate human beings, don’t call after 6:00 PM, hey, even use the mail, and then we’ll talk about getting some respect. But, before that, you all deserve to be treated as the parasites and fleas that you are, sucking the lifeblood of kindness from every American who bothers to have a real job.