I like the Non Sequitur cartoons but sometimes the joke can be a little obscure as in this one.
I’m baffled. Any ideas?
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
I like the Non Sequitur cartoons but sometimes the joke can be a little obscure as in this one.
I’m baffled. Any ideas?
Because telemarketers are, in a word, LOATHED. Hence the “Welcome” mat. (Could also be a “Telemarketers are going to hell” thing.)
But who put out the mat? Not the gravediggers surely, and the family members who arranged for the burial are unlikely to have done so.
Mano @#2
I think you’re digging too deep. : )
WMDKitty has the gist of it.
One comment I saw was: “Old telemarketers never die. They’re simply placed on permanent hold.”
I think “professions which it is socially acceptable to publicly express loathing for” have changed over the years. It used to be lawyers and used car salesmen, but I think they’re more likely to be recognized as human these days. Telemarketers, though, are widely seen as the lowest of the low.
But who put out the mat?
If I knew of a telemarketer being buried somewhere near me, I might spring for a mariachi band. Especially if they were one of the people behind robo-calls. In that case I’d spring for the mariachi band and a lot of beer, so that everyone’s bladders would be nice and full when we all peed on the grave.
There’s a good joke involving a bagpiper and a funeral and a septic tank.
Perhaps we are meant to infer that even the family was so disgusted with the decedent that they collectively decided to depict that.
I think it is a little unfair to hate on telemarketers. It must be a rotten job and the people who take it are likely doing so because they need the money. In the grand scheme of things, they are just annoying, not evil.
I may be trying to hard, but I feel there is a difference twixt a telemarketer, and a phone center worker…
(I’m not entirely sure what the difference is, or even how any of those terms are officially defined, but I recognize telemarketing as being nearly universally hated, and also phone center workers as being pretty exploited and abused…)
@5 & a mariachi band at a funeral: When a close relative of mine died, their partner’s mariachi band played at the funeral, reminding me somewhat of a jazz bands & funeral processions. As such, it was quite appropriate and appreciated.
Having worked as a telemarketer in the past, I can personally vouch that the ones who engender the hate -- the pushy repeat callers and such -- are not only arseholes in other areas of life, but also are generally the ones with the worst sales figures. Aggressive sales are frequently off-putting, which angers the thin-skinned dears, which leads to aggressive sales, which…
It’s simply a reflection of the false cheerfulness the telemarketers use when they reel off their opening gambit.
(In a foreign accent) “hello, my name is (insert regular English name) how are you today?”
I usually answer in a non expected way and see how long I can derail the thought processes of the nuisance caller.
Years ago I was in Raleigh NC on business and got chatting to some people in the hotel bar. They told me they sold sex toys and proceeded to regale me with ever more fanciful tales of their wares. After a while I noticed some holes in their story and asked one of them what they really did.
Turns out they were telemarketers, they just made up outlandish stories about what they did because if they just opened with “hi, we’re telemarketers,” people tended to avoid or berate them..
Hah! That brings back memories. Having an Australian accent myself, I found it easy enough to convince people that I was calling from Adelaide CBD. The guy next to me on the other hand, being an immigrant from India and having an Indian accent… Poor guy. Half of his calls included: (In a foreign accent) “hello, my name is Raymond [his actual name] how are- No sir, I am calling from Adelaide! Yes, from Currie Street! I promise I am! …Hello?”
The deck was stacked against him.
[OT]
Holms, if you only knew the delight with which I engaged telemarketers…
At least as much fun as arguing on the internet, and I felt virtuous.
After a while, I did take pity and spoke to them as person-to-person, sympathising with their circumstances. Even got some relieved responses. But still… they called me, it’s not as if I called them. Obs, my game was to make them hang up.
()Seem to have stopped calling, these days. Shame. But it did take ages)
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Related: https://sluggy.fandom.com/wiki/Telemarketer_Trilogy
I remember a couple threatened to harass me by ringing all the time and whatnot; I literally laughed in their face and noted I had all the time in the world, they were paying all the expenses via opportunity cost, and only one tried it for a day or so. Heh. Good times…