Before we agress the telesales caller ...

"Our fight is not against flesh and blood ..."

I often find myself thinking that when brushing off a telesales call. I try not to do so angrily, but I try not to engage them too much -I'm usually trying to do something else when I take the call and part of me doesn't want to give them false hope. And sometimes I'm working hard to keep a lid on my irritation.

Now, when I pick up the phone and realise it is a salesperson, I picture the caller sitting in a cubicle with my first duty manager glaring aggressively over their shoulder. I know they are probably only doing it for the money and that they would rather be visiting their sister and her new baby, or studying for a Masters degree in systems engineering. But they feel they have no choice – they need the job.

So while part of me wants to immediately press the red button and end the call, I do my best to focus on the caller and treat them with decency. In an effort to make a personal connection, I sometimes find out their name and where they are phoning from, which can lead to surprising – if usually short – conversations about their lives, and my own.How to empathise with a telesales caller | Roman Krznaric: 

I've got to say that they often don't help 'themselves'  by the scripts they have to follow (I assume). For example, I  presume that by asking after how I am, they are supposed to be creating empathy. But the fact is, the only people I've  never met before who ask after my health are people who are trying to fast-track a sense of empathy in order to try to sell me something. So I find that I get irritated because I've been asked something manipulatively. I'd rather they actually didn't go in for the spurious attempt to create rapport but simply said a bit more directly what they are about.

But I'm still left with that irritation. How to deal with that? I don't want to be irritated, but I also don't want to spend time being sold to when I really don't want to buy whatever it is. Perhaps, taking a leaf out of Mr Krznaric's book, I should immerse rather than push away. Perhaps I should ask them how they are and keep asking further questions until some kind of genuine connection is reached and I am no longer their mark and they are no longer my psychological mugger. Do I have the courage? Maybe. My big issue may actually turn out to be feeling that i have the time.