rant · moment 8 of 22
Selling Copiers in Staten Island: Ida, Al, and the Big Leagues
from #169 - We're The Dirtbags | The Tim Dillon Show · #169
9 min
A long saga about his telemarketing/copier sales job — the brutal commute via ferry and bus, his sales script, top producer Ida still riding the bus, and getting promoted to Al's Manhattan office with unhinged coworkers like Nikita and Madeline.
- Tim wanted a Craigslist job posting for telemarketing because he'd been a loser his whole career.
- He called a man named James in Staten Island who offered him a 9-to-1 telemarketing shift.
- His unemployment benefits were running out—two years of the Obama plan, 99 weeks total.
- At 27, he had to go back to Nassau Community College just to stay a full-time student and keep collecting unemployment.
- Tim was in gym class at 28, self-conscious about not being picked as anyone's tennis partner.
- His commute to the telemarketing job in Tottenville was two and a half hours each way.
- He'd take the R train down to South Ferry, then the Staten Island Ferry—a boat that runs 24 hours and takes people the wrong direction from the Statue of Liberty.
- The S 74 bus would then sit for an hour and a half before dropping him off at Reliable Office Systems for his $12-an-hour copier sales job.
- Tim's pitch: he'd call companies claiming to be with Reliable, asking if they still had their Ricoh copiers leasing and wanted to go paperless.
- His approach was to overwhelm the customer—everyone hates their copier anyway, and his Canon machine would break just as fast.
- The office was depressing; you walk into sales expecting to see nice cars in the lot and think you could make it too.
- The top producer was named Ida, an older woman who was saving up to finally afford a car after six months of hard work.
- Ida was taking the bus—the same bus as Tim—even though she was the top salesman at the office.
- Ida's sales technique was to talk extremely fast and overwhelm people with phrases like 'cannon cannon copier scanner fax' until they agreed to Wednesday appointments.
- When reps actually showed up to the appointments Ida booked, customers would say they had no idea what she was talking about and didn't need anything.
Staten IslandStaten Island FerrytelemarketingNassau Community CollegeReliable Office SystemsStatue of LibertyPatrice O'Neal