What’s a web page, a printing press, or even a personal segment on a national TV show for, if not to express your opinions? So, in honor of Andy Rooney, the popular TV personality on the CBS television program ‘‘60 minutes’’, here are some of mine. The following is a list of things that some of us take for granted, yet they denigrate and diminish our quality of life and should be punished. Therefore, I designate them little crimes. In some cases, I’m able to offer a punishment for these
crimes although not usually a totally satisfactory one. Punishing the guilty can even be fun!
Crime 1: Telemarketing.
This is one of the most heinous crimes ever perpetrated on the American public. Telemarketers are the scum of the earth and deserve even less respect than door-to-door salesmen or maggots. At least maggots serve a useful purpose, and door-to-door salesmen are willing to sacrifice the comfort of their air-conditioned offices in order to harass you. Telemarketers do neither. Because their crimes are condoned by the Government and by the telephone companies, and because their crimes are conducted remotely,
you have few weapons in your arsenal. However, you do have one thing on your side. The most important thing to remember when dealing with telemarketers is that their time is MONEY! Your time is more valuable than theirs of course, but they don’t know that. Punishing this crime will undoubtedly require more time and effort than almost any other crime against consumers because there are so many telemarketers prowling the telephone circuits. However, if we all unite as a group and resolve to put into
effect the countermeasures I am about to describe, we can defeat them easily. There is a great (and very humorous) site at http://www.stopjunkcalls.com/ that contains many more suggestions than I’ve mentioned here – highly recommended!
If you don’t have the time to harass telemarketers properly, then at the very least be as rude as possible to them. If you had a bad day and you have any anger or frustration built up, take it out on the telemarketers – that’s what they’re there for. You’ll feel better afterwards. There is absolutely no need whatsoever to be polite to them, as doing so only encourages them to call again. If I answer the phone and don’t want to bother with them, as soon as I have determined that they are in
fact a telemarketer, or are trying to ‘‘survey’’ me, or in general want something from me, I usually terminate the conversation with something like ‘‘F*** You’’, or ‘‘Eat S***’’, or words to that effect and immediately hang up the telephone. If we can make their jobs miserable enough, perhaps these cretins will find other employment less harmful to the public.
Punishment:
- This option isn’t actually much of a punishment; it falls more into the category of defense. For a pro-active approach, see option B below. The simplest and easiest thing you can do to protect yourself from telemarketers is to get an answering machine and turn the ringer of your telephone to the OFF position. Yes, telephones these days do have switches to select the volume of the ringer, and most include an OFF position. You can of course still make outgoing calls although the ringer is off. I don’t
even know when a call comes in unless someone starts leaving a message on my answering machine. If it’s someone I want to talk with and I’m home, I’ll just pick up the phone and talk to them as usual. Strangely enough, telemarketers do not leave messages on answering machines. Perhaps they figure their time to too valuable to waste talking to a machine, even though they usually use machines to automatically dial numbers from a database to make the connection. I tell my friends and family not to
ever expect me to answer the telephone personally even if I’m home, since it doesn’t even ring. I explain to them that I’ll pick up the phone when I hear their voice if I’m there and if not, I’ll call them back as soon as possible. Most of them like this arrangement, especially if they’re calling long distance because when I call them back they don’t have to pay for the connect time charges, and the slight extra cost to me is worth it because of the extra peace and quiet I get. One thing
you should do is to keep your outgoing message short and simple. It’s rude to your friends to make them listen to a lengthy monologue every time they call. My outgoing message says: ‘‘Hi, this is Ron, please leave a message when you hear the beep.’’ A friend of mine uses a message that simply says: ‘‘Hello’’....
Things to look for when you’re shopping for an answering machine are: 1) It should have an OFF position for the ringer volume, and 2) It should deliver your outgoing message silently, i.e., only to the caller and not over the loudspeaker so that you don’t have to listen to your outgoing message every time your machine answers a call. Also, if possible it shouldn’t even register a call as having been accepted unless a message has been recorded, that way you don’t have to listen to a lot of
empty silence when you play messages back.
- This approach is more fun, but requires some of your own time and effort. Whenever a telemarketer calls, simulate interest in whatever scam or shoddy overpriced product they’re offering. Inject a well placed affirmative ‘‘Hmm’’, or ‘‘That sounds interesting, please continue’’, or whatever you wish but make it sound enthusiastic. This may be difficult if you’re in the middle of dinner, engrossed in a good book, or watching a movie. However, you do not need to let them ramble on
forever. In fact it works best if you interrupt them before they’re finished because they will feel a need to complete their sales pitch or the script they’ve memorized. The following technique works especially well if you’ve equipped your telephone to play the Bobby McFarin tape mentioned earlier while they’re on hold, however just sitting the telephone handset down on a table or chair works well too. Remember that they are probably so accustomed to rudeness (as well they should be) that the
slightest hint of politeness will make them accept almost anything. At the soonest opportune moment, politely interrupt them with one of the following excuses:
- ‘‘Would you mind if I take this call into the other room [den, study, back room, etc] so that [my kids don’t interrupt, my wife can watch TV, etc]?’’
- ‘‘Excuse me, someone’s at the door, could you please hold on a minute?’’
- ‘‘Oh Goodness! Something’s boiling over in the kitchen, can you please hold?’’
- ‘‘I have another call on the other line, could you hold please?’’
Once you have them on hold just put the phone down and go back to whatever you were doing before they called. You might want to have an egg timer nearby so that you remember to hang up the telephone after three or four minutes. Note that it’s not necessary to check whether they are still on the line before hanging up. If they are, which is unlikely, they will just assume they’ve been accidentally disconnected. Normally, by the time you hang up the phone they will have realized what you’re up to
and will have hung up themselves; however, that’s not always the case.
Once, a telemarketer called back a few minutes later still thinking I was very interested in her product. Before she could get more than a few words out of her mouth, I used a different excuse to put her on hold again. Unbelievably, she called back a third time! Finally, the third time she realized what was happening, because when she called back the *forth* time she launched into some of the worst language I’ve ever heard anywhere from anyone! I immediately hung up the telephone, and it started
ringing again almost instantly! She was obviously determined to vent her rage, so I turned the ringer off. Yes, telephone ringers do have an OFF position. That episode was the highpoint of my day! It made me realize that we can irritate telemarketers almost as much as they irritate us. As a bonus, I had managed to waste about one half-hour of her time, so if you missed that telemarketing call you were expecting some evening not long ago, it may have been thanks to me. Now it’s your turn to return the
favor.
Crime 2: Magazine Inserts
What can be more irritating than receiving your favorite magazine in the mail and not being able to turn to a particular page because cardboard inserts only allow the magazine to be opened to those pages with the inserts? For that matter, more and more magazines don’t even bother to number most of their pages, or at least they don’t number the pages with only advertising, which is normally about half the pages in the magazine. That’s a story for another time however. I once ripped out all of the
cardboard inserts in a favorite bimonthly called Cook’s Illustrated. It’s a small magazine of only about 30 pages, and yet it contained fourteen postage paid reply postcards for subscribing to the magazine. At 20¢ per postcard, that’s $2.80 in postage for one tiny magazine. Why on earth they think I would want to subscribe fourteen times I don’t know. I thought about boycotting the magazines that come with those inserts, but that’s impossible, they all do it! When you pull
out the inserts, it usually causes the staples that are holding them in place to be bent outwards from the inside of the magazine pages forming a dangerously sharp needle point projecting out from the page. These are capable of inflicting a bloody wound if you happen to fold the magazine back and run your hand over it. I’ve cut myself on these things more than once. Fortunately, revenge is easy to obtain.
Punishment:
Mail them. It’s just that easy. Don’t fill them out of course. Once you’ve gone to all the trouble of pulling all the inserts out of your favorite magazines, why toss them into the trash when you can toss them into an outgoing mail box just as easily? The recipient, usually the magazine, has to pay the postage if you mail them, but if you toss them into the trash they get off scot-free. This works well with the postage paid cards and envelopes you get with junk mail too, but in that case you should
make sure that the cards aren’t preprinted with your name and address.
Of course if everyone did that, and I hope you do, the magazines and junk mailers would probably stop making the cards and envelopes postage prepaid and instead might require you to supply your own stamp, but I doubt it. I think the allure, at least in the perception of advertisers, is that it’s easier to ‘‘hook’’ a new subscriber if he/she gets free postage with the bait (i.e., the prepaid subscription card). If it weren’t practical to put prepaid postage on their subscription postcards,
they probably wouldn’t be used so heavily. Even if that were to happen, think of all the satisfaction you can get right now while the opportunity to strike back is available. So toss all those prepaid postcards and envelopes into the mail instead of the trash!
Crime 3: Call Waiting
What can be more insulting than having someone hang-up on you in favor of an anonymous telephone call from an unknown person? Are they really so bored with your conversation that they would rather accept a phone call from a stranger than to continue their conversation with you? Sure, you’re only ‘‘put on hold’’, but that’s even more offensive than being hung up on because you’re left holding the bag (or more accurately, the receiver) in your hand, unable to do anything except await the
return of his or her royal majesty at their pleasure. To top it off, you don’t even get to listen to pleasant music in the background while you are waiting! I have even had people call me, and then try to put me on hold! The word ‘‘Audacity’’ does not even begin to describe the arrogance of that kind of person. If you feel you must stay on the line, I suggest you use that wasted time to plot your revenge. The telephone companies are co-conspirators in this crime for inventing
call-waiting in the first place. Their punishment is coming, but that’s another story.
Punishment:
There are several available remedies for this atrocity depending on your level of anger and your relationship with the other party.
- Just say ‘‘NO.’’ This only works if the other party has the courtesy to ask ‘‘May I put you on hold?’’ Anyone rude enough to want to put you on hold is unlikely to ask your permission however. I have seldom had anyone ask, and if they do ask they never wait long enough to allow me to reply.
- Hang up. That’s what I usually do. It saves you the most time and requires the least explanation. If the other party calls back, explain your disgust with being put on hold to him or her. I also explain that I hung up because it’s certainly less trouble for the other person to call back (usually just a single press of the ‘‘redial’’) button, than it is for you to sit there wasting your precious time.
- Put them on hold and go have a pizza. Any excuse will do, it doesn’t have to be because someone else is calling you on the telephone. After all, people who are offended by others who use the call-waiting telephone feature are not likely to have call-waiting themselves. You can say that the pizza man’s at the door, the teapot is boiling over, etc. Get a telephone that lets you play an endless tape of Bobby McFarin’s tune ‘‘Be Happy, Don’t Worry’’ into their ear while they’re on
hold. You can also put them on hold while you are on hold for them, of course this will probably result in being disconnected, but that’s good too.
- Get a speakerphone. People who use speakerphones are almost as offensive as people who use call waiting. Only use it on your rudest callers. Get the oldest one you can find, preferable one with lots of echo that sounds as though you’re calling from the Hall of the Mountain King. It should also have lots of squeals and feedback. Turn up the gain on the microphone so that even the sound of your breathing will prevent the device from allowing the other person to speak. Make lots of background noises
so that the telephone will cut off portions of their speech in mid sentence. Frequently ask them to repeat what they said because their voice is ‘‘breaking up’’.
Crime 4: Speakerphones.
The use of speakerphones is another subtle insult that’s best dealt with by avoiding people who commit the crime. The impression people who use speakerphones are trying to give is that they’re so busy and important they don’t have the time to give you their complete attention, and that you are so unimportant and insignificant that you must compete in the background with whatever task they happen to be working on. People who really need their hands free while they converse should, and usually do, use
a headset. If you must talk with them on the telephone however, here are some suggestions.
Punishment:
- Get your own speakerphone and fight back! Use some of the suggestions from the ‘‘Call-Waiting’’ punishment regarding speakerphones (see Item 1.D. above).
- Without making it obvious, gradually and continuously adjust the volume control up and down so the other person must do the same. Gradually turn down the volume so that the other party has to keep turning up their volume. At the appropriate time, turn your volume all the way up and shout into the telephone so that it causes lots of feedback and squealing noises.
- Purchase a noise generator and position it close to your speakerphone. Usually these come pre-programmed with a variety of sounds. Pick one with noises that sound like they could credibly be attributed to a telephone line problem or noise in the telephone electronics. Turn it off when the other person picks up the telephone and speaks into the handset. Tell them that you don’t hear any noise. If this works well enough, they may stop using their speakerphone altogether!
