Robo Callers can Robo Suck It

What follows is a rant.  For those of you that like my funny ones better and not my ranty ones (ahem Dad, I am talking to you) then maybe you should just stop reading.  Although there is a possibility that this post will contain at least a small percentage of humor, meaning that there is the admittedly outside possibility for this to be the funniest blog post I have ever written and you would have missed it because you are biased against my rants (because you have been hearing them for the past three decades in loud volume).  I’m just saying, choose wisely.

So listen.  I know that I have written about this definitely once but maybe even two times.  I believe it is important enough to warrant some repetition.  These goddamn spam callers are making me crazy!  Seriously.  I have been on the National Do Not Call Registry for so many years and yet I still receive these calls at least two times a week.  This is how it goes.  I get a call from a number I do not recognize.  I immediately get rage-filled.  Depending on my mood I either let the call go and research it on the internet to discover that it is some company trying to lower my interest rate or I answer the call and play the following game:  try to get the individual on the other end of the line to identify the name of their company before they hang up on me.  This game is really not that fun for the following two reasons:  (1) I always, I mean always, lose; and (2) the result is that I get even more rage-filled.  It’s as if I am a super hero and spam calls to my cell phone are my kryptonite.  I might be in complete control of my temper and my reaction to things and then my phone rings with some random 616 number and BAM any modicom of restraint I had flies right out the window.

So at work the other day I was talking to my one customer about my disdain for spam callers.  This came up because my dislike for spam callers is matched by my dislike for people who sell things on the television that are obviously pieces of crap but they market them towards people who are elderly, unwell, or stupid.  I think that is really mean-spirited.  So when my grandpa was all hopped-up on end-of-life pain medication he was watching TV and found this advertisement for newly minted nickels.  So my grandpa, bless his heart, spent something like $1000 on $500 worth of nickels because the commercial told him they would appreciate in value.  They were fucking nickels.  A nickel is worth five cents.  It does not matter how nice of a box you put them in or how shiny they are they are worth five cents from now until the end of time.  The only thing that changes about the value of a nickel is that it becomes less valuable because of inflation.  In his better days my grandpa knew that because he was good at things and also smart but when you’re sick and on medication and watching late-night television because you can’t sleep your judgement tends to go out the window.  And these people are there like little vultures, circling around just waiting to feast on you.  Seriously, fuck those people.  They make me so mad.

So anyway, I was talking to one of my customers about this and he said to me something that people say to me all the time because I have opinions and express them often and animatedly:

Why don’t you tell me how you really feel?

I hate that.  It’s like, I just told you.  That IS how I really feel and if you wouldn’t have made that “joke” I would have run out of steam and moved on to something else.  But now we both have to suffer because I am going to continue to get myself all worked up about spam calls and the value of nickels and you have to listen to it while you drink the vodka and orange juice I’m pretty sure you’re now regretting having ordered.

Anyway, in mid-rant this customer, who has obviously become accustomed to my antics or else is very skilled at blocking me out until there appears to be a break in the rant at which time he can sneak in a comment, said something about feeling badly for the people that work for the cold calling companies.  He pointed out what a terrible job it is and you know what?  He had a point.  In all the time I spent being mad at people who call me and tell me they can lower my interest rate it never occurred to me that I should be angry not at the person calling, but at the person who owns the company because, really, there aren’t that many jobs out there and maybe having a job, albeit an inherently dishonest one, is better than nothing?  I mean, who knows, maybe the grandpa of the woman who called me a few weeks ago also bought nickels at a wildly inflated price.  Or, maybe the woman was a robot.

And, actually, you should go read that article I just linked because it explains EXACTLY why these calls piss me off so much.  They piss me off because if you try to talk to a real person after dealing with a robot and ask them questions about the robot, themselves, or the company then they hang up on you.  It’s like, you called me so why are you being a dick?  No one will give you any actual information because the whole thing is a fucked-up scam.  And then when you finally do manage to get information* and then publish that information online, all of the phone numbers associated with the “company” go to busy signals when you call and the company’s website comes down off the internet.  The whole thing makes me see red.

In the next edition of things that make me crazy, I will write an open letter to both Chase Bank and Discover about the psychological damage their constant credit card come ons have caused me.  Stay turned.

*Apparently calling and telling them that you work for Time yields better results than telling them that you are the editor-in-chief and main (read: only) contributor at FranklyRebekah.com.

Tags: cell phones, National Do Not Call Registry, phone etiquette, robo calls, Samantha West, spam calls, Time Magazine