I hate telemarketers.
I especially hate when a telemarketer manages to somehow take me by surprise and elicit a response from me that allows them to launch into their sales pitch before I can diffuse the situation by blowing my ever-present air-horn into the phone and then hang up as the blood shoots out of their now burst eardrums.
Sometimes, I even laugh evilly as I hang up.
However, this morning I received a call from a telemarketer that caught me by surprise and before I realized what was happening, this person had launched into their well-rehearsed spiel. Luckily, I am almost always prepared for just such an emergency, but this time I decided to use a different tactic. This time, instead of playing their game, I decided to make up some new rules and completely confuse the living daylights out of them.
I pretended to speak in tongues.
Oh, I started simply enough, responding to his questions with seemingly innocent answers, but by the time he was asking if I was interested in hearing more about the available plan choices I was replacing every fourth word with a random word I spied in one of the magazines on my desk. So, instead of saying, “I’d love to hear some more about this but I’m a little busy right now.” I actually said, “I’d love to museum some more about jelly but I’m a little kettle right now.”
Of course, the guy just plowed on so I got more inventive.
My response to, “Are you interested in hearing some more about our platinum level membership rewards?” was a rather confusing, “Some dust bunnies ignore the traffic lights when speeding.” This caused him to stutter for a moment before he tried to continue with, “Ma’am,” (I really HATE that people think I sound like a woman on the phone!) “Becoming a platinum level member costs just $59 a year, would you like to sign up now?” So I hit him with, “Rain makes my animal cracker shoes soggy.” About then, he realized he wouldn’t get anywhere with me, but I give him credit for trying one last time with, “If you’ll just give me your credit card number I can sign you up right now.” To which I replied, “Avast! Tall timber falls for which witches falsetto timbre?”
Silence, followed by the disconnection click of victory.
That’s classic! I don’t get telemarketers though. I have call intercept so any restircted numbers have a different ring which I then don’t pick up. For those numbers which are not restricted, I don’t answer unless I recognize the number or name on the caller id. Anyone important has my cell phone number anyway. For those of you who might be offended at that last comment…if I was that important to you, you’d find a way to get my cell phone number wouldn’t you?
Too bad you didn’t hit him with “What’s in your wallet?” when he asked for your credit card number!
I thought that telemarketers were supposed to stay on the phone until the ‘victim’ hangs up.
Nice, this is.