Personal data is not very private in Finland and many registries and databases are publicly available. Consequently, many companies take advantage and kick off telemarketing campaigns. The most usual calls are from sellers offering magazine subscriptions or from the mobile phone operators in search of new customers from other companies. These calls are frequent and I receive once a month at least. Or if the telemarketing company messes with the database several call might arrive in one day. Recently, I received three calls in one day from mobile operator Sonera, but the funny thing is that I am already a Sonera customer.
This situation is very common in many other countries, but being a foreigner in Finland and not being able to speak very good Finnish, the situation gets interesting. Naturally, telemarketers expect that the person answering the call speaks Finnish, so when that it is not the case, a sudden fear invades the telemarketers. Their voices tremble, their body shakes and I bet drops of sweat run down their backs. It is an odd reaction because most of the Finns have an acceptable English level and should be able to keep a simple conversation. They are embarrassed of being caught unprepared for a conversation in English and Finns cannot handle an embarrassing situation, they are really bad at that. They panic and the Finnish shyness is demonstrated. Better off dead than shame.
“This guy does not speak Finnish! What to do now?”, telemarketers need to think quick fast. When facing the troubling question “Excuse me, could you please speak English?”, after a few seconds of silence, many take a very easy decision and they just hang up without saying a word, not even in Finnish, as they hide under the desk. The communication cuts off. Sometimes the caller has previously explain where he or she is calling from, and if one understands a bit of Finnish, it might be possible to realize that the call is not important. But other times, if English is introduced in the conversation early enough, you might be left with the disturbing feeling of not knowing who is trying to reach you.
Some other times, the telemarketer is not that rude and, after laughing nervously, he or she might replied, with a great English pronunciation, that sorry, but no English is spoken. On those situations, I wonder why they would not make the effort of explaining what the call is about. It’s not in the script, I suppose. If the call is important enough, the caller might say that an English speaking person will call again later, although you never know if that will happen (and usually doesn’t).
Nowadays my Finnish has improved enough to understand what the call is about, so when I don’t need any new magazine, mobile phone or I just don’t want to be bothered, I only need to say the magic words: “Could you please speak English?”.
