Damn, I loathe mobile phone salespeople ...

[snorkackcatcher]

Well all right, I loathe pushy salespeople of any kind. But the ones who sell mobile phones just seem to be a special kind of irritating.

Warning: rantage follows.



This little rant was prompted by walking back up the High Street in the pouring rain just now. A besuited man was standing in the doorway of some mobile phone shop or other, and as I went by:

Man: Do you have a BT landline?
Me (startled): Yes ...
Man: (launches into spiel about some contract or other ...)
Me: ! ...

I think the most aggravating thing was his complete lack of awareness of the utter absurdity of what he was doing. Viz., accosting perfect strangers in the street, ones who had shown no interest whatsoever in his products, and expecting them to stand around getting soaked while listening to his sales pitch. All done with complete seriousness and without a trace of potentially redeeming humour.

Hence my rapid reply: "Fuck off!" -- said with as much incredulity and contempt as I could manage to put into two words.

(Why yes, I am often a bad-tempered bastard. No, there weren't any impressionable kiddies, or indeed anyone else, close by as far as I could see.)

Unfortunately, I believe the law frowns on stringing such salesmen up by their balls -- doubtless some bleeding heart human rights thing, but I mean, there are limits. Otherwise he'd have been swinging next to the man who answered the phone when I wanted a code to switch networks -- the one who greeted this request in accusatory tones that suggested personal betrayal, as if I'd seduced and abandoned his kid sister or something. And then followed up by demanding to know why I was changing with levels of scorn and condescension more appropriate for someone who'd just announced their recent purchase of the Brooklyn Bridge.

I eventually just hung up on that bloke before I said something very offensive. This time ... hah! No more Mr Nice Guy ...

*takes deep breath*

That felt good. :D

Comments

[octobersnow.livejournal.com]

I know the feeling. There used to be a saying that "The customer is always right", but I think that no one in retail now abides by this. As customers we are treated as morons who don't know what we want or need. We have to be told by these creeps.

"Fuck off!"

Most effective reply to a pushy salesman. It's the only way to get the point across because saying "No thank you, I'm not interested." is like speaking Martian to these people.

I've gotten to the point that I don't buy things based on sales pitches rather than the reverse.

/rant - You're right ranting does feel good. ;)

[snorkackcatcher]

Yeah. :) Unfortunately, I think they're actually trained to behave like that nowadays. Presumably it works often enough to be worthwhile, but for me it's become one of the quickest ways to get me to hang up, walk away or whatever.

[spoonfuloftears.livejournal.com]

I was going up to a friend of mine this winter, it was pretty late and freezing, snowing and what not. This part of the road is dark and a pretty long distance from any main roads. There in a dark corner I got assaulted by a phone salesperson. I mean WTF! I couldn't have been more surprised if she'd jumped me in the middle of a forest. Nobody goes there, it's a dead end street. And she wouldn't lay of either.

Now we just have an assembly of Greenpeacers that wants to talk to you... They never stop do they ;P

[snorkackcatcher]

Okay, that trumps my story. :)

[spoonfuloftears.livejournal.com]

Just so you know you're not alone :)

[jesspallas.livejournal.com]

Oh dear Gods, don't get me started! In my town, the gits hunt in packs - if one doesn't get you, the next one will. All I want is a nice quiet lunch hour, a walk into town, grab an sandwich or some shopping and then either sit out if it's nice or head back to the office and check my email or write if it's not. And do I get that? Nope. Instead I have to run the gauntlet. At every intersection through pedestrianised zone, one is waiting and if I can, I go head down, walk on the other side of someone else and don't make eye contact. If I can't or I accidently meet their eye, I proclaim myself to be late or extremely hungry and scurry by before the spiel can start. I can avoid the Sky salesmen at the booth and the counter because I know where they hang out and Save The Children-ers (who are by far the most common and numerous) can often by skirted because their big red tabbards stand out (though not always - I've counted ten in a two hundred metre stretch before now). Most dangerous are those not dressed in telling tabbards who try to make you take their "quick" survey. But the worst by far are Greenpeace. They are evil! They will follow you down the street and they don't care about excuses. I even saw one Greenpeacer grab a woman by the arm and haul her back when she tried to walk passed!

*shudders* It's like a game of skill and chance every lunch hour. And all I want is a quiet life...

[snorkackcatcher]

*blinks* Wow, I obviously got off lightly. Or maybe it's just that I often tend to not pay attention to people when walking down the street. :)

Maybe you need to look more offputting. Perhaps if you took the sword with you? :D

[hibernater.livejournal.com]

I do sympathise, but with the salesman too, I'm afraid. Maybe it's the fact that in my theatre class I watched a video of how much running around and hard work personal sales require, and how terrifying it is for them- you know, not making the requisite sales and getting fired- and how desperate they get because once they're fired no one will hire them and they aren't qualified for much else. Though the video I was watching was about them during the Depression, so it was a lot harder to get jobs at, say, McDonalds, to tide over the worst times. But as a lately unemployed person with a temporary job that only lasts till August . . . well. He was irritating as hell, I'm sure, and it's not your responsibility to humor the idiot (he's obviously an idiot if he thinks someone is going to stand there getting soaked to buy his phones), and you're not required to feel anything else, but if you did choose to imagine the inside of his head- I shudder at the gut-wrenching panic that makes him stupid enough to resort to soliciting strangers in the rain, that's all. Sorry. This isn't a very appropriate response, is it?

[snorkackcatcher]

Fair point, in the same way as I sympathise will call-centre people to an extent -- but only to the extent that they act like human beings.

If this guy had looked like an ordinary salesman -- you know, spotty teenager or overenthusastic twentysomething with a suit and power braces -- I wouldn't have minded so much. But this was an older manager-type with an air of self-importance that suggested he was doing a favour by telling me about his stuff, and that just put my back up ...

[green-kiwigirl.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, I know. I was buying a falafel the other day and the man making it wanted to cram every single item in the deli into it, seriously. I must have told him about a million times that I only wanted the lettuce and the sauce on it and he pointed to everything in the damn place, and was like, "You have this now! It's good!" One of the other guys at the deli had to shove him out of the way and take over because he was actually, like, shoving huge amounts of unrequested stuff into it.

Friggin' annoying idiot. And the other day, this random man tried to sell my mum a piano and just would not let up. He kept sayind, "You can play it for your children. Eh, you know, the kids these days– they need the real music. The stuff they listen to now... no good."

I can't believe you managed to say that! I could never do that. Sometimes I'm waaay too polite.

[snorkackcatcher]

I can't quite believe I said it either. :) But my tolerance for annoying people happens to be low at the moment, and this just hit a nerve ...

[tree_and_leaf]

I could never do that, even though salesmen make me seethe. Partly because I'm a coward, and partly because I would hate to be stuck with their job.

My technique is a blank stare followed by saying (in my 'best' extremely bad Russian - which I can no longer spell or do with any degree of accuracy, so genuine Russophones look away now) Ja idubh na vacsal - I am going to the station. Or if I'm out with my mother and we spot them in advance, we drop into German. Works every time (although one of these days I shall meet someone who speaks Russian, and it will probably be embarassing...)

[snorkackcatcher]

Hmm, yeah, that could work. Although I might be inclined to use a more offensive Russian phrase. :) As I said above, I have some sympathy for people in these jobs, but there are times when it runs out ...

Oddly, vacsal ('voksal' was the transliteration I saw) is one of the few Russian words I know, and that was purely because the story behind it stuck in my mind!