Telemarketers

I am on the “Do Not Call” List, so I’m not supposed to get calls from telemarketers. But does that stop them? No siree, it does not! But I suppose persistence is a virtue, eh? And it just shows that spirit of “go get ‘em”-osity that they are willing to jump any hurdle, climb any wall, knock on any door, and surmount any obstacle just to get that highly-sought-after opportunity to irritate and annoy us all at home. And frankly, who wouldn’t want to do that? (Is there a super-villain yet called: “Harassing Phone Call Man”, or: “The Tenacious Telemarketer”, or perhaps even: “Telephone Turpitude Dude”? I call dibs on this idea if there isn’t one yet. He could have a telephone headset hanging on his head, and he could have an old-style rotary phone dial on his chest, and a numerical keypad on his back; plus, he’d speak through some megaphone-style device over his mouth so he’d sound like those nasaly-static-y operators from a bygone era.)

I thought that joining the “Do Not Call” List would end the annoying harassment of such telephone calls at infuriatingly inopportune moments, and it did so for a short time; however, there appear to be ways around this telephone firewall, and everyone seems to be making use of them. For instance, if you are a charity, you’re allowed to nag people on the phone every day if you so choose, even if people beg you not to. Also, you’re allowed to call people with surveys, even if they don’t want to take part in them. And additionally, there is the tactic of assuming that since there are exemptions to this phone-call prohibition, that means everyone will be so harangued with infuriating telephone calls that they won’t notice if all the purportedly banned telemarketers just started calling again; and so they do: they do!

I heard there was some large fine levied upon any telemarketer who was so diabolical as to call a phone number they knew to be on the “Do Not Call” List, but apparently, if there ever was one, they’ve decided against implementing or enforcing it whatsoever. So now these nefarious reprobates have deduced that they can nag us all they like again, and there’s not much we can do about it. This became clear to me when I was being hounded by jerks from some shyster investment company, and I asked them to take me off their list, and they just kept calling anyway. So then I started just picking up the phone and hanging up. But then they would just call me back endlessly until I picked up the phone and then they would hang up on me. Ah: sweet revenge for them upon someone who has the temerity to want to be left alone and have his privacy and rights afforded by the “Do Not Call” List honored. Screw people like me, man! (But you’ve got to love that go-getter spirit of revenge: it’s just admirable that young people today have such an exemplary work ethic: that’s the kind of tenacity we need in our young professionals if America is going to lead the global economic recovery: eh, what?)

I’m getting more and more telemarketing calls nowadays too. It’s almost like the spam of telephones, it’s getting to that ridiculous of a level. And most of them these days are calling from a number listed in caller ID as: “Private Name, Private Number”. This should never be allowed for a telemarketer, and anyone who is caught doing it should be sent to a “black site” and, um, subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques”! (I will happily volunteer as inquisitor in chief.) It’s getting so bad that I’m starting to feel like we should have a new law passed that permits telemarketing so long as we at home get a special button on our telephones that when pressed sends a painful electrical shock to the handset of the calling telemarketer (and the phone won’t work if it’s disabled, like with the breathalyzer on the car of a multiple DWI offender), and if they annoy us, we both know that we can inflict pain upon them. It’s the only way it’s fair. I have had to turn my ringer off, it’s so extreme some days. Surely this is not meant to be permissible under a Democratic administration, is it? I thought they wanted to help protect consumers and innocent civilians from the odious wrath of these toxic telephone tormentors! (Or maybe these iniquitous tyrants from telemarketing harassment firms donate lots of campaign cash to politicians’ election campaign funds? Doing so appears to help large donors get away with most anything, as well as becoming flush with taxpayer money and federal loan guarantees, so perhaps this is what’s been going on here? {You never know!})