Secret #21: "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You"
i used to enjoy talking on the telephone. It was a treat! Back then, phone calls cost money. Lots of money. Long distance was saved for special occassions and you would call on Sunday since that's when long distance rates were the cheapest. You curled up in a big chair and you could shove the receiver under your chin bolstered by your shoulder and play with the coiled cord with your fingers. i think it all started to change around 1988.
That was when i was sent to East LA for Recruiting duty. Talk about a miserable job. It was sales, straight forward sales. But instead of a product to sell, you had to sell a lifestyle. And i was always straight up with the guys - and the occassional girl - and if it wasn't a good fit, i wouldn't push the issue that much. Add to that the fact that there were so many illegals in LA with "temporary visas" under Bush1's "amnesty program", dropouts and joyriders and finding that person qualified to be in my Army was a hard time indeed. At the heart of every sales program is the cold call. We'd have our lists of high school seniors - and, hopefully, their ASVAB scores - and we'd have to have x% called by a certain date. PLUS, you had to call for so many hours per day until you got a certain number of appointments. How many appointments? Well, based on the number of soldiers you recruited the past 90 days, then look at how many had to go take the physical to get one signed up. Then look at how many had to pass the ASVAB to get one down to take the physical. Then how many had to take the test to get that many to pass. And how many appointments conducted to get those testers. And how many appointments made to get that many conducted!! So if you bogus'd appointments, that just made your numbers get even bigger. Sometimes, your numbers would be so bad that they were just unreal and unattainable. So sometimes you'd just have to call for hours. Days, nights, weekends... it never ended. You'd dread picking up the phone. It was truly miserable.
In the '90s, when i took over my dog section, half of my job was working the phones. And i was good at it. i always knew who to call to get things done and i always got things done. i "gave good phone". And a lot of the time, the reasons i had to call people were confrontational. i hate confrontation.
Finally, over all those years of working with dogs and other Army things, my hearing started to fade. It's to the point were i actually have a 15% hearing loss. It's kind of a frequency thing. In a busy restaurant, i can't make out half of what's being said across the table. When i'm at work, if you come up behind me, if i don't respond, i'm not ignoring you, i just can't hear you. Or i'm ignoring you. i'll never tell.
But certain frequencies hurt my ears. A lot of the frequencies filtered into a call hurt after a short time. So i don't call people anymore. Except Matt. Daily. Other than that, not unless i have to. So don't give me your phone number, give me your email. At least then i might remember to send you a message. But i won't call. i promise.
You can see all 30 of my secrets here.