Funny True StoriesYou can find the funny true stories Table of Contents on that page and also more real life stories here. The funny short story below is also one of the narrative essays I read at the Story Salon in Studio City, CA.You've Been Selected
After having worked in fast food and retail, I thought I'd hit the big time when I scored a job working at
Birch Radio Research
. There I had reached the holy grail of all high school part-time jobs, I got to SIT instead of stand for a whole shift. When I heard that we were assigned our very own cubicle and allowed to drink soda while we conducted telephone surveys, I felt like I was a real professional like
Melanie Griffin in Working Girl
. "Maybe I'll cut my hair and get a briefcase!" I thought excitedly. During the training, they told us about how our surveys helped radio programmers determine what to put on the radio and that each person who completed a survey actually represented a thousand people from their community. I thought, "I wish somebody had called me so I could determine what got on the radio and what didn't." I'd always wished my family had gotten picked to be a Nielson family so that could convince the world to bring back quality television shows like Battle of the Network Stars and Remington Steele. And even though it wasn't a television survey, I imagined how thrilled people would be to get my call. I diligently learned all my scripts and objections to make sure that when people took the time to do the survey that the survey was "valid." I didn't want the to disappoint the person who took the survey by doing a bad job and not letting their opinion represent the 1,000 people in their community. That would be horrible. And since all of our calls were monitored, I knew that this was all very serious and very important work. So after my training, pumped on many cokes and deluded optimism, I hit the phones. "Who wouldn't want to take a survey about what they heard on the radio?" I thought to myself, but quickly learned that nearly everyone wouldn't. Apparently, when it came to taking surveys, not everyone shared the same point of view as a high-school-aged girl, who had nothing better to do than to surf the radio hoping to hear Duran Duran. My Dad was a salesman, and he always told me to smile when I spoke on the telephone. "People can hear it when you smile," he said over and over again when I was growing up. And he was right; it worked. Between the smiling, my delusional perspective, and the five cokes I would drink every shift, I turned out to be really good at the job. I kept getting raises and special incentives and harder surveys to do, which was really handy, because it was my senior year of high school and I needed the money. They invited certain surveyors to take advantage of a special opportunity on Mothers Day. In return for working the holiday shift, we got free pizza, free cokes, double time pay, and an extra dollar for every survey we completed. I signed up right away. I couldn't believe more people weren't jumping to take advantage of this select opportunity to work. Mother's Day came, and I was off to work. As promised, they had out the free pizza and cokes. I ate my fill, and hit the phones with my usual optimism. Then, I learned why we were getting, what I had thought was an incredible amount of cash and prizes, to work the holiday. "Hello, This is Christy Murphy calling from Birch Radio Research, and you've been selected to participate in our survey." "You do realize it's Mother's Day,” says the very annoyed woman on the line. "Yes, I do. May I speak to the person in the household over the age of 18 who has had the most recent birthday?" "What the heck is wrong with you?" she screamed. "Why are you bothering people on Mother's Day? My family is here giving me presents and you're calling to interrupt us." "Oh, I'm sorry to interrupt, but the survey will only take a few moments, and you're opinions will represent 1,000 people in your community." I was reading the stuff off the cubicle walls for handling people's objections and smiling and being as positive as I could, but I felt really bad for interrupting her Mother's Day. I thought if I acted happy it might distract her into not yelling at me anymore, and I knew that many of our calls were monitored so I couldn't say sorry and hang up. We needed to get three specific objections to taking the survey before being allowed to terminate the call. She'd technically hadn't even given me one objection, but I thought her mentioning Mother's Day would count as one, but even then, I needed two more before I could offer to call at a later time. Naturally, she could terminate the call at any time, which would save us both, but she didn't choose to utilize this power. Instead, she had a survey of her own she wanted to conduct. "What kind of person bothers people on Mother's Day for a living? What is it that you need the money for so bad that you're willing to do this? Huh? Tell me." the irate woman demanded. My brain totally seized as I scanned the walls of my cubicle for the script to answer this rebuttal. "Just tell me. Why are you doing this?" she continued. There was nothing in my training or on the scraps of paper tacked to the walls that would help me. "I don't know what to say," I said to her. I was completely flustered. "Just tell me why you're interrupting my Mother's Day for this call! Why are you doing this?" Not knowing the right thing to do in this situation and being really unnerved by the fact that instead of hanging up or continuing to the requisite three objections so I could hang up, she kept asking me questions. So, I answered her. I told her that I had I broke up with my boyfriend Marco, because instead of asking me out to prom like I thought he would he told me that some people get married after high school and that freaked me out, because we'd only been dating for three months, but what that meant was that I needed find my own prom date, which I did, but I asked a college guy from a music program I'm in to go with me, but I couldn't expect him to buy the tickets and the richie kids on the prom committee seemed to think everybody's parents could afford $110 tickets, but since I had to buy two tickets and my dress $79 dress was already on layaway at Sears, and prom is only six weeks away, I needed to make some money. So when I heard that we get double time for working on Mother's Day plus free pizza and a $1 extra for every survey we completed I thought it would be exactly what I needed for prom tickets and dress, but I didn't stop to think that I would be bothering people on their special day, and I'm really, really, sorry. There was a long pause on the phone. I was hoping she had hung up. I was trying to sound like I wasn't crying, but there were silent tears streaming down my face and my voice had started shaking way too much, and I was sniffling. "Oh for crying out loud," the lady on the phone said to me. "I'll take your damn survey." It took us nearly an hour to complete her survey, but she answered every single question. That was my last night working at Birch. It didn't bother me that even months after prom was over, my bosses at Birch kept calling the house asking me to come back. I figured their constant calls during dinner and on the weekends were karma balancing out the Universe. I knew it was time to pay the piper. Next Funny Short Stories Exit Funny True Stories and Go To Short Stories Home If you like funny true stories just fill out the box in the right column and you'll be alert when funny true stories and funny true stories audio downloads are available. The funny true stories on this site are for your own personal enjoyment and not for republication on the web or in other publications. Please write for permission to use the funny true stories elsewhere. |
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