Only two days left.

[thisficklemob]

And I found today's inspiration: Dear History by Saul Williams:

Dear History... I have walked through your museums wondering how it is that greatness has lived and died all before my time

Comments

confession

[thisficklemob]

I haven't started calling yet today.

It's not that it's hard. They do everything to make it easy for you. It's that it's hard for me. I don't like calling strangers on the phone. I'm not that great about calling people I know. This makes my pulse speed up; I have to psych myself up. I've been trying to psych myself up, but it's just so hard to start.

Ok. I can do this.

[thisficklemob]

4 down, 21 to go.

The phonebanking system is pretty well designed. They set you up with a queue of 25 names and numbers. (That was one of the things I was worried about, how long a list they'd give you.) When you click on one, it brings up the screen with their name, gender, age, and address.

It has, all on one screen, that info, the person's polling place, a script, and radio buttons to mark their responses. The only snag I've hit is that I'm not always sure how to code people's responses, but I just pick the nearest thing. (Not wanting to say how they're voting = "other" for who they're voting for, etc.)

[anne_jumps]

I went to a phone bank again today; the place was jumping as usual. I was there for about two hours and called about 100 numbers, although I usually had wrong numbers or left messages.

[thisficklemob]

Wow, I haven't even finished my list of 25! (Although I've been getting actual humans.) Good job.

[snolan]

Yeah, the variances in call times is staggering. You can sometimes get a string of 100 or more numbers where no one answers; and other times you get real humans with every call and it takes a long time to get through 5 calls.

Good luck, and I hope that everyone you talk to is polite; it is not always that way, but mostly it is.
Try to be sympathetic, sometimes people are getting called a lot because it's hard to coordinate all the different phone banking efforts.

[thisficklemob]

Well, a couple have been abrupt, but no one's been mean. I apologized to the guy who said he'd already been called today, and I kept a smile on my face the whole time.

It gets easier; I'm getting better at the spiel.

[thisficklemob]

Well, I haven't finished my list, but the system (sensibly) stops providing numbers at 9pm.

I've discovered that it's actually easier for me to make one call after the other. I'd been taking breaks in between, to kinda recover... but if I make a bunch at once, I can kinda get a rhythm going.