I've Got an Issue: Recorded Phone Solicitations

It's 6:14 PM. Short people are running wild all over your house. You have just walked in from work and now have a dinner-impossible situation: figure out what to serve three children of different ages, a husband who doesn't like carbs, and yourself (who loves carbs and can live without meat). In twelve minutes, you frantically open cans, slap peanut butter, run the microwave, freshen up leftovers and miraculously get something edible on the table. Everyone washes hands and sits down while it is hot. You know what happens next...

...the phone rings...
...only it is not a person on the other end...
...it is a recorded voice...
...selling you credit protection or...
...telling you why to vote for Hilary or Barak or McCain or whoever or...
...asking you to participate in a poll.

You wait until the message's end for a call back number, call the number, wade through the punch-button system, and tell the poor person on the other end to never ever even under the threat of alien invasion call your house again (only to be cheerfully told that it may take up to 90 days to get you on the no-call list), but by this time, your toddler has dumped her dinner all over the floor, your older kids are asking you to make more PB&J, your husband has finished eating, and your dinner is cold.

Recorded solicitation messages give me violent tendencies. I'm on every no-call list invented, I always tell companies that I don't accept phone solicitations, and I try to be polite. So what gives these idiots the idea that I would love to hear their pre-recorded b.s. during my dinner? Talk about a cheap trick: "we don't want to spend the money to pay live people to make these calls, so we'll record one message and have a computer do the work." Aaaaargh! I'm waiting for the gadget that will let me push a button and send a terminal virus back through the phone line, so I can blow up the computer that dared to call.

Attention telemarketing companies: get some audience analysis skills.