The art of telemarketing

I just got a call from a research company on behalf of Enterprise Rent-a-car, where I had rented a car over the week-end.

The lady said she had a few questions for me and would I have a few minutes to answer them? I said sure.

She asked me how satisfied I was with the overall experience and how likely it would be for me to choose Enterprise again when I wanted to rent another car. Short and sweet, though the enumeration of the possible answers after each question I found a bit annoying.

But afterwards, she said that my answers were valued and that they were helpful for Enterprise, and thanked me for my time. Which would have made a better impression on me had it not sounded as if she was reading from a script.

Scripts are fine. Sincere appreciation is also fine. But "appreciation" from a script just doesn't cut it somehow. The way she read them off, they sounded like empty words—or shall I say, like words that weren't hers.

I think that was the most insincere bit: that it sounded as if she was reading them off a sheet of paper or off a computer screen and saying them because she was expected to say them, but without feeling and without giving the impression that the emotion expressed in them originated from her.

I suppose that's part of the art of telemarketing: making it sound as if you're speaking naturally and you're really interested in the customer's business, not reading formulaic phrases off a script that someone designed to make customers feel good. (Because lady: they don't if it's so obvious that you're not putting any life into them.)

It's not that she sounded bored with her job or anything; it was just a neutral delivery.

The things you learn: omitting the apostrophe in German

Apparently, it's allowed to omit the apostrophe when the "e" in "es" is omitted: "Mir gehts gut. Er macht sichs gemütlich. Nimms nicht so ernst."

Huh. I would've thought the apostrophe was obligatory there, but quoth Duden (Richtiges und gutes Deutsch, s.v. "Apostroph"):

Der Apostroph steht häufig, wenn Buchstaben am Anfang eines Wortes ausgelassen werden und das Wort dadurch schwer lesbar oder missverständlich ist. [...]

Man kann ohne Apostroph schreiben, wenn die Kurzform des Prononems es mit dem vorangehende Wort (Verb, Pronomen, Konjunktion) verschmilzt. iese Verbindungen sind im Allgemeinen nicht schwer lesbar. Der Wortzwischenraum wird in diesen Fällen nicht gesetzt.

Mir geht’s / gehts gut. Er macht sich’s / sichs gemütlich. Nimm’s / Nimms nicht so ernst.

Huh.

Oh, and Duden also says that according to the new orthography, no apostrophe need be used when a final -e in certain verb forms is dropped:

Ich find das schön. Ich lass es bleiben. Das hab ich nicht getan. Küss die Hand! Hab ich nur deine Liebe!

And the apostrophe is explicitly not to be used in general ("in der Regel") with common short-form imperatives ("allgemein üblichen verkürzten Imperativformen (Befehlsformen)"):

[...] bleib!, geh!, trink!, lass!, leg den Mantal ab!, führ den Hund aus!

I wasn't sure about the apostrophe rules there, so that was interesting to know.

But the "es" rule? That's one I never would have guessed. At least apostrophe-dropping is optional there, rather than mandatory.