I got a call from a telemarketer tonight and it really bugged me. My hands were full, and it was raining, and it was during peak hours on my cell phone plan, so I didn’t really appreciate it when I answered and heard from someone offering to me a beautiful free cruise. Well, I the offer of a free cruise was nice, but it kind of annoyed me when I dropped everything in my arms just to take the unwanted call.
When I came home I went onto google image search and looked up “telemarketers” so that if I saw any of them on the street I could go up to them and knock everything out of their hands and talk their ear off for ten minutes about something irrelevant. But most of the pictures are of people who look like this guy.
That could be almost anyone in the world! How am I supposed to tell him apart from all the other douchebags wearing ties in this city? Is he going to be wearing that headset all the time?
Not only that – his photo also appears on websites for thirty different telephone related services, including several software companies, and a sheep breeder. Well, I come to find out that that’s not even a real telemarketer. He’s a model for a clip art service. He gets paid to pretend to be a telemarketer! And it looks like he’s doing a great job.
There’s other clip art out there on the web, from unique designs with text to beautiful illustrations. The best one I saw though would have to be from this software site who I won’t name by name, but here’s their homepage:
They sell a lot of productivity enhancing items – spreadsheets, concept mapping, dictation devices. But look up in the corner there:
Just what is that fellow doing? They have him labeled as “JCV Gantt Pro 2” which means that he himself could be a productivity enhancer that they offer for sale. However, he also is holding that pencil in his hand and looking thoughtfully at the gallery of purchasing options.
I like to think that he is a bright young procurement officer for a subsidiary of a Fortune 500 company, and he’s thinking, “Productivity software, huh?” and then he’ll look down at the pencil in his hand and say, “Number two, it looks like it’s time to retire you.” He’ll sigh and put the crisp yellow pencil, so minimally used that the eraser bears no scrub marks and the lead is fully sharp, into his desk drawer with other forgotten items: some paperclips, pages from an old desk calendar, a pager, a novelty abacus. He will shut the drawer on the pencil, saying goodbye to its hopes of being used in the service of commerce or imagination.
And then he will be mauled by a bear.
I don’t know why. Just because.
the Blanket Statement 
