I have a new nominee for the inner circle of hell. There are now telemarketers that are LEAVING MESSAGES ON MY ANSWERING MACHINE . Ironically, I blame the success some states have had with no-call lists. Sure, in New York and fifteen other states, you can put your name on a no-call list and get relative peace. In thirty-four other states, the telemarketers are getting desparate, so we're not only getting the calls that rightfully should have gone to New York, but they're leaving MESSAGES now. "Hi! Sorry we missed you! We wanted to make you aware of a special program in which you can earn great money by working at home! For as little as an hour a day!" Aarrgh.
And, to make this even more like a bad MetaFilter post, here's the obligatory -
more inside.
I can usually ignore the 10:00 am Saturday morning hang-up calls, and get back to sleep. "Dela-mahkedurrs", I mumble to my wife, when the answering machine picks up and no message comes through. This morning, though, that one came on schedule, but at 10:30 the second call came and the damn machines started talking to each other. Clearly, these aural spammers intended to fill up my whole machine with their irresistable spiel. I followed my usual practice in dealing with such affrontary - stumble down the stairs, bouncing hard off the walls, pick up the phone and yell "IF YOU EVER CALL HERE AGAIN, YOU'LL GET SUED TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH!!!", slam down the phone and feel stupid for yelling at a machine.
I wish I could plan a better script for these occasions.
Posted by: yhbc on May 18, 2002 07:04 PMI usually act real interested, and then say "Wait, hang on for a moment", and then leave the phone sitting there.
Often, they'll wait a good five minutes or so before figuring it out.
Their tiny, irritated voice is oddly satisfying.
the *only* way to make them stop calling is saying flat-out "take me off your list." they're legally bound to do it.
i should know. i used to be a telemarketer. (shut up)
Posted by: sugarfish on May 18, 2002 11:11 PMMy wife (her name is "Chris", which is why I didn't weigh in on the Chris-fest kafkaesque and Stavros had a while back) plans out entire telemarketer dramas for the next opportunity. Her latest plot involves slowly going crazy as the poor sap delivers his pitch and finally shooting herself (with the assistance of a book slammed to the table) to heighten the experience the telemarketroid experiences when there's nothing but dead air on the line. That's what I mean when I say I wish I could plan these things out better.
Just to get it off my chest (and to avoid monopolizing the front page): remember my stupid "fold the bills, see the WTC" post? The last thing I wanted to post to MeFi before it went down Friday afternoon (and it will be far too late to do it when it comes back up) was that the ever-redoubtable snopes was on the ball quickly with this one. They not only thoroughly and properly debunked the idea (with the same degree of tongue-in-cheekiness that I thought the topic deserved) but they also came up with an even better bill-folding result from an unidentified foreign currency:
and on preview!!!
sugarfish, I'm sure you were never a telemarketroid, though. ;)
Posted by: yhbc on May 18, 2002 11:21 PMThis is sci-fi prophecy coming true. Long after humans are gone, the answering machines and auto-dailers will still be around to market to eachother. I find this comforting somehow.
Posted by: jonmc on May 18, 2002 11:58 PMTwo words: fax spam.
Nothing more annoying. It actually wastes your paper and ink cartridge.
Now, my fax/printer sits sad and inkless, and silent mime faxes keep pouring in. What do they say?
They are the silent scream.
Posted by: kafkaesque on May 19, 2002 09:42 PMi wasn't a droid, but i was good at what i did. and when people wanted off the list, i didn't get pissed off. saved me 3 minutes.
Posted by: sugarfish on May 19, 2002 11:39 PMI have a voicemail box at work (that I never check, I only communicate through email). Whenever I get around to checking it, I have ten or fifteen fax messages waiting, taking up space on our voicemail server. I only tried to print a couple up once. Both were spam for cell phones... and I don't use that number and don't give it out to anyone. Fuckers.
Posted by: eyeballkid on May 20, 2002 02:25 AMA note about posting images:
We encourage users to post images, especially those hilarous pics of monkeys
wearing dresses or programming for Linux. But posting images that reside on someone
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