Today was not a grateful day. It was a thoroughly-non-grateful-no-good-very-blah day. However, I was struck with a strange realization on my way home from Target (one of my favorite places, I must admit). I am obscenely grateful that I am not a telemarketer.
Think about it: within the years of my memory, there was a day when caller id didn't exist. We couldn't screen our calls. If somebody was calling that was annoying, you either had to put them off or become VERY good friends with your answering machine. Of course, some of the fun has been taken out of answering the phone -- kinda like what happened when all the traffic cams started going up. It took all the sport out of driving, something I highly resented. But I digress.
There is a wealth of wonderful methods for getting rid of telemarketers, methods that are sadly underused now in our caller id world. I enjoy my brother's technique particularly: whenever somebody would call, he'd howl into the phone like a Tuskan Raider. Then there's my sister's method, far more subtle but perhaps more effective and less likely for the men in white coats to be called out to the home. She just makes her voice sound even higher than normal and convinces the poor schmuck that she's not of age to make any household decisions.
My method is not as dramatic to a degree, but it is effective. I would find a convenient pot or pan, and when the telemarketer started asking questions, I'd drop it noisily and screech, "OH NO! (and possibly an expletive)" and hang up the phone with no further ado.
Then again, I think maybe I DO miss telemarketers now that I'm feeling all nostalgic about them....
5 years ago
