Turn telemarketers calls into CASH. Yep, it works.

[IrishAyes]

23. The feds

are getting increasingly fed up with companies illegally using the DoNotCall list. I saw a couple reports that suggested action may be in the works. I hope so.

Here's a good one for you. A woman called up last week with the usual opener of (my name)? I don't answer to anything but "Hello, my name is so-and-so from such-and-such. May I please speak to (my name)?" They're barging into my house uninvited and unwanted, so they'd damn well better be polite. Since they never are, I interrupt (w/o acknowledging my own name) with "Who's calling?" This woman last week did answer my question but I told her quite directly that she was violating the law and I wouldn't buy anything from her if it was free. She scolded ME then! I hung up on her.

No, I do not need to coddle people who barge into my house electronically and start expecting information beginning with my name. It's rather akin to a holdup. I'm not mean to them - not in my view anyway - but I set them straight quick, and if they still don't behave, I hang up.

I used to toy with some of them, saying if you want me to listen to your sales pitch, you have to listen to mine first. Then I'd start hawking whatever fool thing popped into my head. And believe me, there's never any shortage of that! They'd always hang up pretty quick. But now that I'm retired, I don't have time to do so very often so I just start trying to teach them common telephone courtesy.

BTW, I do that to anyone who calls me and fails to offer a greeting followed by their own name, I don't care who it is. I didn't retire to be tortured by jerks. If they get smart with me and start insisting that I identify myself, I ask if they forgot who they were calling, don't they know? If voice recognition is the only thing required to get a sweet reply, why haven't they recognized the voice of the person they were calling (or not)?

My number is listed in the phone book under my deceased brother's name, so he gets a lot of junk mail. On very rare occasions he gets a telemarketer too, and they can get quite testy when I refuse to let them speak to him. One even warned me of unspecified dire consequences if I refused to give him the phone.

This is only fun because I've managed to cut these electronic intrusions down to one or two a month at most. Until campaign seasons heat up. Then I really play hobbes with the GOP. I'm still writing to Mike Huckabee urging him to split from the stodgy old GOP and run for president as an independent. Not a word why I want him to do so, just that I do. He'd draw a lot of fundies off with him and wreck the mainline party's chances pretty well.