Telemarketers

Hypocrisy, in all its forms, tends to frusterate me. This is not to say that I, myself, have never done anything that could be considered hypocritical. I do indeed, however, attempt to consider my thoughts and actions, and reconcile the two with each other. Something that bothers me alot is when people are deliberately and unnecessarily rude to others. If we are to assume that everyone dislikes being treated in a disrespectful manner, and that everyone wants and generally expects to be treated with relative politeness, it can be said that those who are intentionally rude to others are acting in a hypocritical manner.

In my year-and-a-half as a telephone fundraiser, I have considered this subject extensively. In a recent conversation with a friend of my fiance's, the topic of telemarketers was broached. I was annoyed to hear that, like many other people, he generally treated telemarketers with not only a lack of regard, but with deliberate rudeness; his explaination for this behavior was as follows: "For as much of my time as they [telemarketers] have wasted, I deserve to be able to 'have a little fun' with them." I assured him that talking on the phone for a moment or two to a stranger was much more pleasant than having to deal with rude people over the phone for several hours at a time. "But you get paid to call," he said. This may seem, on the surface, to be a valid point. However, I assert that he, and most other people, are angered, bothered, depressed, or otherwise upset by people who are deliberately mean to them, whether they are being paid at the moment or not. Thus, this friend was illustrating a blatant hypocrisy. "Treat others as you would like to be treated," says the golden rule; those are truly words to live by.

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