Off The Cuff

Speaking Of Television, What’s Going On? I Can’t Hear

Posted by: From Arkansas in Family stuff, Give Me A Break, In The House, My Take on Things on Dec 30 2007

Welcome back!

This is one of the gripes I have about telemarketers and others. We have established a time for supper in our home. It’s between 5 PM and 6 PM. Usually we eat at around 5 PM. Supper or dinner, if you prefer, is usually over in about 20 minutes, give or take a few moments. And with this routine, we are able to have some good time for our family.

But there is a fly in that ointment (You knew there was). TELEMARKETERS. Despite the fact that we have put our phone number on the “Do Not Call” list, they still call us and it is almost always at supper time. Go figure. See, I used to be a telemarketer. The guy or gal on the other end of the call is not your enemy. That person is simply doing their job. In our company, the computer picked who we talked to…there was no dialing of numbers for us. We simply waited until the call was answered by someone and gave our spiel. Yes, they are scripted calls…usually.

Now, occasionally, we eat in front of the television set. That’s so that we can catch up on our movies (see previous posts) and catch the news at night. I realize that we are not then talking to each other. Actually, we do that anyway. It sometimes interrupts what we were watching but if it’s a DVD, we use the pause button. Simple. However, when the call is a telemarketer or someone else who wants to talk at that time, we use the mute button on the tv. Of course, we have closed captioning but what good is that if one of us is on the phone through the whole show or news? So, I get to be the bad guy and tell whoever it is that they are interrupting our supper. I hate doing that to family and friends. I love doing that to telemarketers. But they just call back the same time the next night or the night after that. Sigh.

One of these days, I am going to come up with a similar thing to what this one guy did. He got the telemarketer so confused that the guy didn’t know which end was up. I love it!!! I will have to try that out sometime. Of course, I have a little sympathy for the caller, not much though. They chose the job just like I did. They knew what they were getting into when they started working that way. Ah well.

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