The Teenage Telemarketer

This story is a true. I’ve used creative license in the dialog and narrative and all of the names (with the exception of my own) are fictitious. There may be terms and subjects some might find offensive because, well, they are.

It was 1967. I was a high school sophomore, summer break was coming up.  I’d be getting my driver’s license soon and wanted to earn a few bucks to get a car.  I answered an ad placed by a large, local cemetery or, as they called it, a ‘memorial park.’ They wanted someone to call prospective future clients to see if they’d be interested in speaking to a representative to set aside a plot or plots for themselves and their family. At the time it didn’t occur to me to question why Mr. Morris, the man who interviewed me decided to hire a 15-year old to cold call adults to discuss the subject of their death. I was just happy to get the job. I’d get 25 cents for every call I made, 50 cents for every call that resulted in representative visit and a dollar for every visit that resulted in a sale.

Databases in 1967 were printed on paper. He gave me a three ring binder that must’ve weighed ten pounds. Mr. Morris told me that the names were of people 50 years old and older. Seeing that the only other qualifier was ‘likely to die’, I assume every 50-year old in the six county areas was in the database.  I could call any time of day up until 7PM.  Apparently no one wants to talk about dying in prime time. Mr. Morris gave me a script to go along with the binder. I went straight home and got to work.  

“Hello, is this Mr. Shanahan?” “Yes.” “Mr. Shanahan, my name is Paul and I represent Salem Farms Memorial Park and I’d like to know…” Click. Mr. Shanahan was not interest but he was still worth a quarter to me. Next. “Hello, is this Mrs. Cuthbert?” “Yes.” “Mrs. Cuthbert, my name is Paul and I represent Salem Farms…”  Click. Another quarter. “Hello, is this Mr. Williams?” “Yeah, who’s this?” “My name is Paul and I represent Salem Memorial Park and I’m calling to see…” “I don’t want any.”  Click.

On and on it went. No call lasted more than a minute. Maybe it was my voice, maybe I still sounded like a kid. Or, maybe it was the script. I decided to adlib. What the hell, right? A quarter’s a quarter and it isn’t like any of these people are taking notes. I tried the upbeat game show host approach, “Hey! Is this Mr. Crenshaw?” “That’s right.” “Well Mr. Crenshaw my name’s Paul and I’ve got some great news for you!” “Really, what’s that?” “Your name has been selected to receive a visit from a representative of Salem…” Click.

One of the most popular shows on TV at the time was Twilight Zone so I tried a Rod Serling approach, “Mrs. Cronin, my name is Paul and I’m calling to tell you about a place.” “What do you want?” “A place where the departed rest on a hill overlooking a harbor where…”  Click. I called hundreds of people and got nothing but hundreds of hang-ups and hundreds of quarters. Every Friday Mr. Morris would come by the house and I’d give him my list of failures. He didn’t seem to mind. He’d pay me my quarters and encourage me to ‘hang in there.’  Having people hang up on you all the time can be tough on a 15-year old. Mass rejection often can lead to depression and from there, who knows. 

Not only that, I had two teenage sisters and two teenage brothers. My monopoly on the phone was causing tension in the household. One night, over dinner, they let me have it. Their point was a solid one. The money I was making wasn’t worth tying up the phone all day. They insisted I quit and find something else. I couldn’t argue with their logic. Even if I could, I wouldn’t. I had come to dread making those calls. I knew before a word was said how it was going to end. What was once a happy kid without a care in the world had been exposed as a chronic failure? I couldn’t get one person to agree to accept their mortality and prepare for it.

My father was a man with years of experience dealing with disappointment. To hear him tell it, his life had been nothing but. He was also the single most racist and bigoted person I’d ever known. He couldn’t talk about a person without included some demeaning epithet of nasty racist slur.  His vocabulary of hate wasn’t limited to Blacks (n-word) or Jews (k-word).  Every Italian was a ‘wop’, Pole a ‘polack’, Asian a ‘chink’ and so on. My siblings and I suspected dad’s all-inclusive prejudice likely contributed to his lifetime of disappointment.   

As I was about to begin on another fruitless hour of calling strangers to accept the inevitable fate of death, my dad walked in, “Paul, let me see that book of names.”  He opened it and pointed, “Rabinski, Polack.” Having lived with dad’s attitude all my life his instant characterizations didn’t shock me.  He pointed to another, “Bocelli, wop.”  At the same time, I wasn’t in the mood to listen to him show off his skills in matching names to whatever inappropriate racist term applied, “Okay dad, I know, they’re all something we’re not, what’s your point?”  “The point is son, when people die they want to be put in a place among their own.”  “Huh?”  “No Jew wants to be buried next to a kraut. No polack wants to be buried next to a wop.”

My immediately reaction was, “Bullshit.”  This was the late 60’s, an era of racial enlightenment.  Blacks were going to schools with whites.  Martin Luther King had a dream.  Cesar Chavez was fighting for Latino farm worker's rights.  Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn had Sidney Poitier over for dinner!  My dad was a dinosaur.  He didn’t know what he was talking about.  But that never stopped dad, he provided the following tip, “Look, call this Rabinsky guy.  Before he gets a chance to hang up, tell him the cemetery has a section reserved just for polacks.”  “He might not like being called that.”  “Okay, then say ‘just for Polish people’.  Go ahead, what have you got to lose?”  Besides a sliver of my soul and self-respect, nothing. 

My obsession for making a successful cold call blinded me to the fact that Salem Memorial Gardens had no ‘special section for the Polish.’  I thought for a few moments of how to exactly word the lie then dialed.  As I waited for Mr. or Mrs. Rabinski to answer I cleared my throat. The voice of a man who sounded like he was likely wearing a bowling shirt said, “Yeah, hello.”  I cleared my throat again, “Um, is this Mr. Rabinsky?” “Yeah, I’m Barry Rabinski, who’s this?”  “My name is Paul and I’m calling on behalf of Salem Memorial Gardens and I…”  “What?  How old are you?”  The nervous sweats returned, “Um, I’m um, twenty-three.”  “Bullshit.  Look kid I don’t have time for some stupid prank…”  “No, Mr. Rabinsky, this isn’t a prank!  I really do work for Salem Memorial Gardens and they really do have something that they think you’ll find important!” 

Mr. Rabinsky laughed and hollered to someone who I assumed was his wife, “Gwen, some kid on the phone’s trying to sell us a cemetery plot!”  Gwen laughed.  Mr. Rabinsky (Barry) got back on the line, “Okay kid, I’ll bite, what is it?”  I sucked in a deep breath and launched into my fiction, “Salem Memorial Gardens is now offering sections based on nationality, religion or race.”   The moment of silence seemed, to me, promising.  It was better than a click. Mr. Rabinski returned, “What do you mean?”  “Well, we have a section set aside for persons of Italian, German, English, Irish, Polish…”  “You got a section just for the Polish?”  “That’s right and it happens to be the one with the best view of the harbor.”

My ability to weave such magnificent bullshit out of whole cloth amazed me.  Years later I would get a job in advertising as a copywriter and ascend to the rank of creative director.  I’d create some of the most successful and memorable advertising of the 20^th and 21^st century.  In hindsight, I think it all started with that call to Mr. Rabinski (Barry).  “You’re saying, after I’m dead all the other dead around me will be Polish?”  “That’s right Mr. Rabinski and a parcel for your wife is available for half price but you have to act now.”  “Oh.” I sense a concern. “What’s the matter Mr. Rabinski?” “My wife’s Irish.” “Oh.”  Now, I had a concern. I had to act fast, “As luck would have it, the Irish section is right next to the Polish one.  I’m sure something could be worked out.”  Damn, I was good!

“Uh, whatta I gotta do?”  The hook was set.  “We can set up an appointment for a Salem Memorial Garden’s representative to come to your home and explain the whole thing.”  “Yeah! Yeah!  Let’s do that!” Cha-ching!  I made fifty cents with just one call, but the money didn’t matter.  I did it!  I spent the next two hours using the same approach.  When it was over, I had a list of over fifty people who wanted to talk to a representative from Salem Memorial Gardens about securing an eternal resting place in the ‘right neighborhood.’  Over twenty-five bucks for just two hours work.  When I told my oldest sister, a devote liberal and follower of the Reverend King she was horrified, “That’s awful!  Telling people they can be laid to rest in segregated places!  You should be ashamed of yourself!” Shame is a tough thing for a failing 15-year-old wanting to buy a car to feel. 

When Mr. Morris came to fetch the results on Friday he was blown-away by what he saw.  Over fifty appointments!  Turns out he was the only ‘representative’ Salem Memorial Gardens had, and this meant he had a lot of work to do.  No matter. He chalked my success up to ‘experience’, gave me $26.50 and left.  The next day he returned and was very angry. “Imagine how I felt when this polack starts asking me about the polack section and I have to tell him we don’t have one besides that, it’s illegal!”  He threatened to sue. My dad reasoned with him, bigot to bigot, “Wait a minute pal. First of all, your cemetery isn’t a public one, it’s private so you can do anything you want, so it’s not illegal.”  “Oh.” “Second of all, obviously this is something people want. All it took was two hours for a fifteen-year-old kid with more zits than teeth to get over fifty new customers!  Maybe you should consider this as a part of your marketing plan.”  Mr. Morris went speechless.

I was fired but got to keep the $26.50.  The phone was now free for my brothers and sisters to abuse, and my dad glowed in the notion liberal thinking only applied to the living and, in death, we all come to our racially intolerant senses.  What he didn’t consider was, all those who accepted the phony offer were over fifty and living in a time when absolute racial intolerance was butting heads with forces advocating for absolute tolerance of all people.  Back in 1967 that was a tough pill for many middle age and older Americans to swallow.  Times have changed and so have we.  I’m sure the same sales pitch wouldn’t work these days or, given recent trends maybe it would.

Now, I’m 72. I’ve seen a lot of changes and based on ones I'm seeing in our society now, can’t help but worry we may be entering an era when a bullshit pitch like the one I made, might work again.  Dr. King's dream was meant for all of us.  It would be a tragic thing to see this dream buried in some segregated corner of Salem Memorial Garden overlooking the harbor.