Klarinet Archive - Posting 000364.txt from 2001/02

From: "Kenneth Wolman" <kwolman@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] Telemarketers
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 20:28:11 -0500

An answering machine or phone company voicemail can be had for next to
nothing these days, and either is a very valuable way to screen calls.
Either method allows you to get rid of a telemarketer in the most logical
way possible, by not answering the phone during the hours between 6 and 8
PM, the dinner period for most normal people and consequently the time when
a telemarketer is most like to swoop down in hopes of finding the adults of
the household at home. So DON'T ANSWER THE PHONE. Period. If it's that
important the caller will leave a message. Most telemarketers do not leave
a message if they don't get a human being on the line. To a telemarketer,
any child not old enough to have his or her own credit card is not a human
being, so kids don't count. Thus, if you're really manipulative and nasty,
and don't mind being investigated by Child Welfare, you can have a
smartassed kid (or adult masquerading as a kid) say "My mommy and daddy
can't come to the phone, they're having sex" or something equally
off-putting. But no telemarketer or life insurance salesman was ever put
off by something as mundane as sexual intercourse, so maybe the first idea
is the better one, after all: leave the phone alone.

Unfortunately most of us are so conditioned to answering a ringing phone (I
do not except myself) that this is one of the hardest acts of
self-discipline I can imagine.

Ken
----------------------------
Kenneth Wolman http://www.rio-cardoner.com
and http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder.tcl?folder_id=49340
"...perhaps we really complete those we love, fulfill their finally
unchanging essence, when they're gone from us, when we take into ourselves
their portions of them still available to us, to acknowledge them more
perfectly, more purely, and do homage to the fugitive, protean forms of
love of, and love from."--C.K. Williams, "Misgivings"

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