The Disgruntled Telemarketer

Once upon a time, I came home from work and the phone starting ringing. As most of my friends have a tendency to call my cell phone, I had a strong suspicion that it was a telemarketer. I picked up the phone.

“Hello?” I answered.

Silence. Ahhh, the telltale silence of a telemarketer. Now, the smart thing to do at this point, and the thing that normal people tend to do, is just hang up. But no, not me. Usually I respond to the telemarketer silence with a silence of my own. I feel the need to keep the telemarketer on the phone as long as possible so that s/he cannot make other calls with the phone line I’m hogging. I’ll put the phone down on the counter and wait until I hear the operator message telling me to hang up my phone. Today, I felt like telling the telemarketer to take me off their call list.

The telemarketer finally began to speak. “Is this the person in charge of the phone line?”

“No. Who is this?” I responded.

“This is . Can you make decisions regarding your home phone plan?” said the telemarketer.

“No, I can’t. Please take this number off your call list. We are not interested in changing phone plans,” I said.

“Well, if you can’t make decisions about the phone, then how do you know that whoever does isn’t interested?” the telemarketer spat back at me.

Whoa. Wait a minute here. You do not call me on my home phone and bitch at me. Telemarketers do not bitch at people they call. People who they call are supposed to bitch at them - it’s a fact of life.

In the split seconds after this remark, I wanted to be like the man in Minnesota. Or the comedian who harassed all the telemarketers. I wanted revenge – I wanted to annoy this telemarketer like a gnat – small and barely noticeable, but persistent and waiting for the opportunity to fly up his nose. So far up his nose, in fact, that he would not be able to blow me out. And for those of you who know me, you know how well I can hold a grudge.

So shocked was I by the telemarketer’s response, that all I managed to get out was, “You are disgruntled. Never call this number again.” And I hung up the phone.

I have done many things to get out of talking to telemarketers. I’ve pretended I was a four-year-old child who responded with a cute little “I don’t know” to any question the telemarketer would ask. I’ve hung up on them right away. I’ve pretended to put them on hold while I got the “head of the household” and let them sit there waiting. After the episode with the disgruntled telemarketer, I’ve now started first asking what company the telemarketer is calling from. Then I’ll proceed to tell them that they have already called, at which time I request to be removed from their call list again, that I am noting this second call as I speak, and never to call again. With all the hype about the federal “Do Not Call” list, I’m hoping that this new tactic will work. I recently used it on MCI, and so far MCI hasn’t called me back.