Students complain about telemarketers calling them at early hours, interrupting their studies or catching them right as they were about to head off to class, but being on the other end of the calls isn’t exactly a cake walk.

Aaron Ladage, freshman in pre-journalism and mass communication, worked as a telemarketer at Access Direct, 215 Alexander Ave., for five months. He said he took the job mainly for the money.

“I think I have good communications and social skills. It also pays well, and I don’t take things personally, which is good for that kind of work,” he said.

Alison Feddersen, junior in journalism and mass communication, also worked at Access Direct.

“I made call after call after call, and you say the same thing over and over,” she said.

Isaac Norman, who has been a supervisor at Access Direct in Ames for three years, said the company uses lots of tactics to keep employees motivated.

“They have games and prizes throughout the day and give their employees positive feedback,” he said.

But both Feddersen and Ladage said the intra-company antics were not nearly as entertaining as some of the callers were.

“Once I called a guy who said, ‘No hablo ingles’ when he found out who it was, so I started speaking Spanish to him, and soon it became obvious that he did not speak Spanish,” Feddersen said.

Ladage said he sometimes got into long conversations with the people he called.

“I called a woman about buying credit card insurance and wound up talking to her for an hour and a half,” he said.

They both said the reactions from callers could be frustrating at times, but they tried their best to ignore the constant rejection.

“I got pretty good at blowing bad responses off, but some people can’t do that,” Ladage said.

Feddersen said she learned not to take rudeness seriously.

“That’s the thing — you can’t take the job seriously, or you’ll be depressed every single day,” she said.

Feddersen said she now empathizes with telemarketers who call her. “I know what they’re going through, so I just say, ‘No, no, no, please take me off your list,'” she said.

Ladage, however, said his experience on the other side of the line drives him to take a different approach.

“I have fun with them. After a while, you’ve heard everything they have to say. Sometimes I ask them stuff like, ‘What’s your name?’ and have them spell it for me — that makes them really nervous,” he said.

Not all telemarketers get fed up with the business. Trent Lewis, senior in ceramic engineering, has worked at the ISU Foundation since August 1999.

He started out manning the phones and enjoyed it so much that he is now supervisor in the Foundation’s telephone center.

Lewis said not all responses are rude, and, in fact, some people say they’re happy that he called.

“You had some people at the negative end who were very, very curt, who’d hang up once you said it was Iowa State calling. But, you also had people who said, ‘Oh great, I’m so glad you called,'” he said.

Norman, the Access Direct supervisor, said despite widespread negative feelings about telemarketing, he feels the industry serves a purpose.

“Telemarketing is a successful business or else it wouldn’t be going on,” he said. “There are times when we don’t connect with people at the right time for them, but all in all, it’s a very successful business.”