Caller ID is a wonderful thing. It can help you to answer calls from your wife with “What?” and screen calls to avoid the thousand-and-one sales calls that come in at dinner time. And our kitchen speaker-phone makes it entertaining, too, by completely mispronouncing the name of whoever it is that’s calling. Like our Privacy Manager feature, which the kitchen phone announces is Pree-vah-see Mah-nah-gerrrr.
Tonight, we dodged several calls from Tel-ee-fund Eye En Seeee, which I recognized from dozens of other dodged calls as Telefund, Inc. I had no idea who Telefund, Inc. was, but since none of my friends or family are named that, it automatically became a call I didn’t answer.
Until they called four fucking times tonight.
I answered the last one at 9:20 p.m. It was someone from the Democratic National Committee who was calling for–
“At 9:20,” I interrupted. “At night.”
She instantly copped attitude with me. “Sir, by law we’re allowed to call up until 9:30.”
And she then proceeded to launch into her schpiel about… Well, I don’t know what the fuck it was about, I was just waiting for the inevitable plea for a donation. And of course it came: If I could just give $25, John Kerry and John Edwards can… Blah blah blah.
I am her target audience. I’m a Kerry/Edwards supporter. I should have been a sympathetic household. But I wasn’t. At all.
“So you’re going to call me late at night and piss me off, then tell me you’re allowed by law to piss me off, and then ask me for money?” I asked her. “I don’t think so. Don’t call here again.” And I hung up on her.
I hope that’s not the tactic they’re using to get votes, too, otherwise Nader will win by a landslide.
