Monday, September 08, 2008

*yawn*

It dawned on me tonight that I don't post about work much. There's really nothing to post about. It is incredibly b o r i n g.

There is however this woman who works on the sales floor. I can't ever remember her name. It's Sue Bob or Sammy Joe or Mary Lou. I can't remember. Anyway, to me, she is just The Telemarketer. All day long cold calling people. She is heavyset and has a big booming barrel laugh.

When someone talks on the phone all day and their voice is louder than a wrestling announcer, you tend to pick up on words and phrases that they repeat ad nauseam. You also tend to get really annoyed too. I decided to find some humor in it.

She really puts her weight behind some of her words too. A simple "Awesome" becomes "THAAATS AWESOOOME!"

Anywho, three words (phrases) that she uses constantly jumped out at me. Touch base, awesome, and cool.

I got a big sheet of paper from my ideasel® (i just made that up) and tacked it to the wall and I've been keeping a tally for the past couple of weeks of each time she says one of those words.

So far, "cool" is way in the lead, followed by "touch base" with "awesome" a disappointing third. Her awesomes are AWESOOOMME and I wish that there were more, but I know why there aren't more. I'll explain.

She uses "touch base" when she is calling a contact back for the second time. Makes sense to me. Cool is reserved for when she gets shot down by a prospective client. An d she will use it three or four times whilst closing out the conversation.

Awesome is reserved for when she makes a deal. Sadly, she doesn't seem to do that very often. She will say it occasionally on a Friday, i.e. "It's FRIDAY. I'm doing AWESOME!" which to my simple brain probably doesn't endear her to the sales manager who will be working all weekend.

How I imagine a typical conversation:

The Telemarketer: "Hi this is Suzy Joe form SuchAndSuch, how are you today?"
Sales Man: "I'm fine. How are you?"
The Telemarketer: "I'm AWESOME! Today is Thursday! Which means tomorrow is FRIDAY!"
Sales Man: "Ah yeah, listen, I'm busy"
The Telemarketer: "Ok, cool. Can I call you back later?"
Sales Man: "I suppose"
The Telemarketer: "Cool. I will talk to you next week then."
Sales Man: "Alright"
The Telemarketer: "Great. Cool. Bye"

Unfortunately, I am getting bored at keeping this tally and will be ceasing operations soon. I have a new better idea which I started last week. Why limit myself to just keeping track of "awesome" or "cool"? This woman is a veritable geyser of goofy words and phrases that she blasts out all day. So, I've been writing down each individual phrase that she says on another sheet of ideasel® paper. Here's a sample:

Here's the kicker
'preciate it
Shoot you a phone call
Are you stoked?

More later...

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