I received an email today from Senator Obama asking if I could make some phone calls to Texas and/or Ohio. I read the email, closed the email and thought good for him. He's asking the people that support him to get out and work for him. I didn't give it much more thought after that. You see, I live in Spain, now how am I going to call people in Texas?
I used Skype.
After high school I took a job as a telemarketer in my hometown back in Iowa. My first job was to sell concert tickets as a benefit for something or other. I hadn't heard of half of the people that for which I was selling tickets and the other half I had sworn were long dead. My boss kept telling me that if I just gave it a little bit more then I could have a snappy Camaro like his. It was the yellow one in the parking lot...surely I saw it on my way in. I just needed to sell more concert tickets and I could have his life. I was eager. I was 18 and on my way to a yellow Camaro. It turned out that my boss could afford that Camaro, not because he was a bang-up concert ticket salesman, but because he was 37 years old and still lived with his mother. I quit.
When I, now several years later, received my bank of 20 cold calls (that's telemarketer biz-speak for those in the know) I got queasy. I remembered my boss. I went to grad school so I wouldn't have to do this, I thought to myself. But, I understood that this was bigger than me, this was about getting Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee come November. I wasn't doing this for a misleading yellow Camaro, I was doing this for the future of my country.
I made my 20 calls and by the end I enjoyed it, I got to talk to some interesting people. I did get yelled at once. The lady told me that I was rude because I interrupted her dinner. I apologized profusely and offered to call back later, she hung up on me.
Senator, if you hear reports of rude campaign volunteers, sorry about that.
