Excuse Me, I'm Eating
Few things are guaranteed to get my goat more than telemarketing. Yes, I know you can get on the no-call list, and I have. Now I only get calls from all those who bought loopholes in the law.
How is it OK for somebody I don’t know and don’t want to hear from to use an instrument I pay for (the phone) to disturb me in the middle of dinner to try to trick me into giving them money? The woman who called last night while we were preparing dinner was typical: the phone rings, you pick up and say hello, there’s that pause (uh oh), and starts with some variant of “Hello, how are you this evening?” They don’t identify themselves, so you’re paying attention trying to figure out who is disturbing your Sunday evening. The game is afoot, Watson! You’re trying to identify them, and they’re trying to keep you guessing long enough to stumble onto your magic button that makes you do what they want you to do. “This is not a sales call.” “I represent a non-profit charity.” “We’re collecting money for helpless, orphaned puppies and kittens.” “We’re conducting a survey (and want you to tell us how to fix the world).”
You don’t want to be rude and say “You’re lying. You only want my money, and I want to spend it on something frivolous like food and shelter. I don’t want to give you any, and I have better things to do with my time than listen to you. Goodbye.” Anybody who would do this for a living is doing it because they can’t get a real job, they have some kind of disability, and you’re going to kick them when they’re this low? Besides, your role in this game is to get them to admit “Alright, yes, I’m trying to deceive you. I actually work for Blackwater (or Hillary, or Jack Abramoff), and I club baby harp seals when I’m not stealing poor people’s hard-earned cash.”
So it’s really a game.
Arguably television is like that too: while you pay for the tube and the cable service and the electricity to run the thing so you can watch Donald Trump or American Idol, suddenly someone comes on and, using subliminal suggestion, tries to get you to give them your money. (And it works. That’s why thirty seconds during halftime of the Superbowl costs millions) The game is you think you’re getting Donald for free, when in fact they’re making you smoke and support American hegemony to keep Al and Edna Qaida from invading your town and making you wear those silly robes. But by God you’re not PAYING for it.
So you keep doing it. And I guess that’s my beef: because so many people give them THEIR money, they assume I will give them MY money. It’s the same reason raccoons started coming into our cat door and trashing our kitchen. . .one of our neighbors feeds them, and they assume what’s ours is theirs. They reason What’s OUR oil doing under THEIR sand? And that’s the same logic these disabled telemarketers use. . .they are programmed into thinking I’ve stolen money from their employers and they have a duty to return it to its rightful owners. That’s what all those books about marketing and how to succeed in business are about. You love God, God wants you to be happy, money makes you happy, that other guy has money and God wants him to give it to you. Onward, Christian soldiers!
But of course if people didn’t buy their crap, they’d stop calling, they’d stop sponsoring the Sopranos, they’d stop giving us candidates like Ahnold and W and Hillary and calling it free choice. Similarly, if it weren’t legal to hire illegal aliens by the millions because they work cheap, they wouldn’t go to the trouble of crossing the border.
So allright, you’ve found me out, you’ve unmasked my hidden agenda for sitting down and writing this: I’m trying to get you to stop buying worthless junk from deceptive marketers so they’ll leave ME in peace to finish my dinner.
Now you can hang up.