888-858-KISS MY ASS

Since becoming a fully nonproductive member of society, I've had the opportunity to learn exactly how many telemarketing calls we receive every day, and it's been a bit of a surprise. Normally they are for Josh, because as the societally productive member of our household, people want to sell shit to him over the phone. One of the benefits of unemployment and complete financial stagnation, that I've found, is that at least people stop trying to sell shit to you over the phone.

Many of the recent calls have been from Comcast, trying to get us to upgrade our cable subscription (which we have no incentive to do, because they're giving it to us already and haven't figured it out yet). They ask for Josh and then I tell them that he isn't here because someone has to go to work to pay for our TV bill, and then they ask if there is a Mrs. Josh, and I say no. This isn't strictly true, but it's also not strictly a lie. The funny thing is that some of the telemarketers actually sound embarrassed, like maybe they think that I desperately want to be Mrs. Josh but that Josh just won't pop the question. Lately I've been taking an aggrieved tone when they ask, to encourage the assumption that I'm a frustrated girlfriend.

I was surprised the first time a Comcast telemarketer sounded embarrassed about asking for Mrs. Josh, but then I remembered an awkward moment that I had once while working as an intern for a member of Parliament in London. I was conducting a phone poll, which was counterproductive in the first place because I'd get out six words of my introduction and the Britisher on the other end would want to know what a Yank was doing working for Parliament. The main good thing to come out of that experience was that I learned that I do have a point where I get tired of discussing myself. Some of those people were supportively interested, the way people often are about students, but some of them had ill-concealed suspicions about my pay and taxes. Those people never did manage to let go of the wrong end of the stick either; once I told them that I was a student and working for college credit as opposed to pay, they stopped thinking of me as a free-loading foreigner and started thinking of me as an idiot.

At any rate, one time I called a number and asked for "Mrs. Bieber" as instructed, and the man on the other end dolefully informed me that, "I'm sorry to tell you, but she's dead. I'm her husband; can I help you?" I was mortified and quickly got off the phone. The whole Comcast/Mrs. Josh thing reminded me of this incident and so I decided to try to exploit their tendency to get embarrassed in the hope that they would retreat faster.

Lately I've noticed a shift in the telemarketing wind. Instead of Comcast, which at least restricts itself to a few calls per week, we've been getting bombarded by Chase Bank, which desperately wants to sell us credit card protection. We went through a Chase-intensive period several months ago during which I fantasized regularly about reaching through the phone and seriously beating the person on the other end. The thing with the Chase phone calls is that they are snotty and perfectly willing to call 6 times a day. The "nice" thing is that they call at regular times, so I can learn when to screen calls. Today I *69'ed the Chase number and learned that it is 888-858-9823. I googled the number and found a long series of rants about Chase and how much different people are convinced that Chase sucks monkey ass. There's no telling these people to leave you alone; they don't obey.

We don't have caller ID, so I'm forced to begin any Chase phone call that I mistakenly intercept with politeness, which I think puts me at a disadvantage. If I knew in advance that it was Chase, I could start off from a position of obnoxiousness or insanity, which I think would be better. Instead of a simple and benign "hello," I could answer the phone as I might if I were working at a phone sex hotline, or else with maddened screams (it would be best if I had a colicky baby for this, but I don't hate Chase enough to produce one), or else with sounds loud enough to wound the eardrums of the person on the other end, or else with the most offensive anti-religion rhetoric I can think of, or maybe by describing a disgusting sickness. I think what would freak me out the most is someone who is quietly but incontrovertibly crazy, like someone who talks in a subdued but inexorable tone of voice about how they like to slowly crush babies and small animals to death by piling rocks atop their soft bodies.

Hey, they're calling me. That means that they're asking for however I feel like answering the phone. There's no law that says I have to open up with "hello." I'm happy to politely ask them a few times not to call again, but after that, you know, I start to feel like I might as well amuse myself.