One funny thing that I forgot to mention. This afternoon while I was on phone bank duty, two teenage girls came in to help. The older sister was pretty good at it, picked up pretty quickly on how to sound natural and engage the person on the line. But the younger sister ... well her heart was in the right place. She would plunge into the script in a breathless monotone with absolutely no pauses or changes in intonation. It was like she was giving a speech while running through a graveyard and holding her breath.
"hello - my - name - is - alison* - and - i - am - a - volunteer - with - the - maryland - democractic - party - i - am - calling - to - make - sure - you - get - out - and - vote - this - tuesday - november - 7th - this - election - is - extremely - close - and - your - vote - is - crucial - can - we - count - on - you - to - vote - for - democrats - ben - cardin - and - martin - o'malley"
It's hard to express tone in writing, but imagine the above spoken very fast by a 12 year old girl robot. I thought it was adorable but I can see how it would be weird to actually get a call like that. Keep in mind that by now, the rest of us had talked to so many irate voters that we'd shortened our scripts to about half that length. That poor girl read the whole thing, word for word. She even read out the "this Tuesday, November 7th," even though that's tomorrow.
Unfortunately she didn't last long. I'm not surprised really. A girl her age probably has way too thin a skin to deal with cold calling. I hope they found something more fun for her to do.
*not her real name.
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