Phonebankin’ it more
I had really tough day at the phone bank yesterday. Interestingly, my phone bank experience on any given day seems to be almost the exact opposite of my peers in the room. When we were doing persuasion calls a month ago everyone talked about how hard it was and how rude people were while I felt like I had a lot of really positive calls who, even if they didn’t agree with me, were at least willing to hear me out. Now we are calling about vote by mail ballots (which, really, everyone should try to get even if it’s just as a back up) and everyone else is saying that they are having really easy calls while yesterday I felt like I was talking to a lot of really angry, negative people yesterday. Hmmm…
Anyway, I’m not going to go off on all the negative rants I’ve circling around in brain since yesterday. Instead I’ll tell you about one of my favorite parts of phone banking. After we finish calling for the day (I’ve always worked the last shift), volunteer coordinator will come in and sit with us to answer any questions that may have come up and talk about how our shift went.
We almost always end up getting into really interesting discussions about why we are volunteering, stories about people we talked to and just politics in general. Yesterday, the woman sitting next to me was a former long time Republican who’s switching over (that’s the second time we’ve had a former Rep. that I know of) because she really feels like it’s Obama’s time.
There was a college student who is volunteering for different candidates and parties as a class project. She told us about volunteering for McCain. (According to her, lots of older men who she felt like were hitting on her the whole time.) She also told us a story from a party that her mother planned for McCain and AZ governor Janet Napolitano. At one point someones dog stole a steak from the buffet and McCain lost it and couldn’t calm down for thirty minutes.Take that for what it is (i.e. a third hand unsubstantiated account), but I still thought it was interesting.
Below I posted some close ups of the Phone Shields that I posted last week.
