I spent yesterday making calls in support of a candidate for political office.   I made the calls from what is known in the business as a “boiler room” which is different from an actual boiler room because instead of a concrete room housing a furnace, it is a conference room at campaign headquarters full of people who don’t really want to be there.  The purpose of the calls was to remind voters that yesterday was the primary day, and to encourage them to vote, specifically for our candidate, who according to the helpful script provided by the campaign, was going to single-handedly balance the budget.

The way these things work is that each volunteer is given a stack of paper containing hundreds of names and addresses, as well as information about party affiliation, and any contact the listed person has had with the campaign, such as if the candidate spoke to them about social security at the Casino Night at the senior center.   The caller then begins to make phone calls, immediately, in front of several other people, which is so awkward everyone wants to throw up, until they’ve made about five calls, at which point it’s just painfully awkward and only some people want to throw up. 

Since talking on the phone in front of people you don’t know is intimidating, and since most of the callers are people who don’t have a great handle on the issues in the campaign or on making phone calls to elderly people in the middle of the day, the campaign provided the aforementioned script, which included convincing language about our candidate’s modest upbringing and stance on certain issues which gave rise to natural-sounding sentences such as “Bob would really appreciate your support because he is a longtime prosecutor and is truly the best candidate in this race”. 

The response to the calls was mixed, mostly mixed in the sense that people under the age of 71 were not home and people over the age of 71 either could not hear me, or had already voted and refused to divulge who they’d voted for because it was apparently a very big secret, or told me they had already received many calls from a campaign, which they were not sure was my campaign, but which annoyed them so much they had called their daughter to tell her about it. One woman even told me that she would be willing to vote for my candidate but that she was “on her death bed” which prompted me to skip to the section on the script designed for reluctant voters which reminded her that this was a “very important election” and that the polls were open until 8pm in the event her condition improved.

On the few occasions I got younger voters on the line the conversation usually sounded like this:

Me: Is this Lucian?

Lucian: Who is this?

Me: I’m just a volunteer calling from Bob Jones’ campaign, calling with a friendly remin..

Lucian (interrupting): listen, I’m working right now and I’ve already had 200 calls from you people.  I would sooner cut off my foot than vote for anyone who has called me.

Me: 200? (Returning to script)  That sounds like a lot of calls. I’m really sorry to hear that you won’t be voting for Bob, did you know that Bob grew up in a working class family and has maintained his working class values?

Lucian: What are working class values?

Me: (disappointed that Lucian has the same reaction to this meaningless phrase as I do): click.

Another pitfall of being an inexperienced telemarketer is the “double or triple call”, which consists of failing to read down the sheet far enough to recognize that several individuals live at the same address and have the same phone number, until after you’ve left three similar voice messages on their answering machine.  This is embarrassing, but not as embarrassing as when more than one person lives at the home, and one of them is 86 and one of them is at work, and you talk to the same 86 year-old twice in three minutes, which probably prompts her to call her daughter.

My finest moment of the day came when I called a man named Jesus, who was both 80, and did not speak English.  I speak decent Spanish, however, understanding a foreign language over the phone is approximately 10,000 times more difficult than in person, especially when you are in a room full of other people who are talking over one another about working class values.  This being the case I’m not sure I hit all of the talking points in my impromptu translation and by that I mean I am certain of nothing except that I correctly conjugated the verb “to vote”.

Sadly, things didn’t work out for my candidate.  This could be viewed as an indictment of our effort in the boiler room, or a sign that people care less about balanced budgets than they once did. Perhaps if we call everyone back we’ll get some answers.

Me: Lucian?