THE RANT OF THE MOMENT:

Telemarketers Targeting the Man of the House

 

During the last few weeks, we've had quite a few calls where the caller hung up when I answered the phone or he (the caller was always male) asked for my husband by his first name. Sometimes they asked for Greg, but more frequently they asked for Gregory (a name my husband uses only when signing legal documents). If I asked who I could say was calling, they would weasel-word their way around giving me a name or give only a first name. When I called Greg to the phone to talk to first-name-only, it would invariably prove to be a telemarketer. If they weasel-worded around and I figured out they were a telemarketer, they would refuse to say what organization they represented and continued to insist upon speaking to Greg while not giving me any information about their organization.

A few obvious possibilities came to mind.

Perhaps my husband is running a dating service. If so, I need to talk to him about our budget and a few items I'd like to purchase.

Perhaps he's secretly gay and has placed a SWGM ad that these men are answering.

Perhaps he's not gay and these are the husbands of the women that he's been seeing on the side and I should check his clothing a little more carefully.

After due reflection, I decided that these possibilities didn't appear very likely and that these callers probably really and truly were telemarketers. After all, the ones I pressed insisted that being on the no-call list didn't mean they couldn't call because they'd done business with Gregory in the past and that exempted them. And no, they wouldn't remove us from their calling list because I wasn't the one called, Gregory was, and they'd just call back later when he might be home. Click.

I have run from my office to Greg's office numerous times to answer the phone and it's either CLICK or, "Hi, is Greg there? This is [mumble name]. With a couple of notable exceptions (and I did most profusely apologize to my husband's friends for screaming at them), these calls have all been telemarketers and my husband has been most annoyed with me for calling down to him in the basement and asking him to take a phone call on the second floor from a telemarketer.

I have to pause and wonder for a moment about the intelligence level of any telemarketing company that thinks they are going to succeed in selling a product to a homeowner by antagonizing the female half of the household. I have to wonder about the intelligence level of a telemarketing company that thinks it is going to succeed in selling a product to a homeowner by lying to the potential customer.

"Yes, you lied to my wife and then me and now you want me to buy something. Of course I'll want to buy it."

Um... I think not.

So after due reflection I have come to the only possible conclusion: My husband is trying to collect my life insurance money. It's only a matter of time until I dive from my chair towards the door, turn left into his office, and fall and break my neck on something he has cleverly left lying on the floor. If that plan fails, then his backup plan is obviously to raise my blood pressure to a dangerous level while talking to telemarketers until my head explodes.

Well, two can play that game. I'll just find a group of telemarketers that target women of the household and I'll give them my phone number for my office on the second story and arrange for them to always call when I am in the basement.

I thought it was suspicious that he bought that cell phone. He must be calling them to tell them when to call me. It couldn't possibly be a coincidence.

Note for the humor impaired. Yes, this is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek. You can laugh now.