Telemarketers Have
Feelings Too

Have an ethical quandary? Beliefnet's wise and insightful ethicist will sort it out for you. Just ask.

The other night at dinner, and for the umpteenth time this year, the phone rang, and it was some telemarketer trying to push a credit card on me. I told her that I hoped she'd find some decent work instead of spending her time disrupting people's dinners. For good measure, I asked her for her home phone number so I could return her call later, like at 2 in the morning.

When I hung up, my wife told me I sounded deranged and was setting a bad example for the children. But I've had it up to here with these annoying calls. Tell me I'm right.
--Disgusted


Dear Disgusted,
Had I received your letter just one week ago, I probably would have answered, "Right on," and then shared some other snappy retorts that I'd like to unleash on telemarketers.

But just a few days ago, I was speaking to a friend of mine, Charles Mizrahi, and he told me that after years after reacting with great annoyance to such callers, he'd had a change of heart. He said that one day he asked himself, Who are these people who are making these calls? He concluded that most of them are probably either single mothers in need of money or people who hold down regular jobs and then take on this second job to bring in urgently needed additional cash.

Visualizing financially strapped people making such calls made him feel more compassionate toward them. So, the next time one came, inevitably during dinnertime, he told the woman on the other end: "I don't think I'm interested in what you're selling, but I wish you success. Now I hope you'll excuse me, but I'm eating my dinner."

The woman on the other end was taken aback and confided that in the week she'd been doing this work he was the first person who had responded courteously. For this she expressed much gratitude, even though she hadn't made a sale.

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