Monday, March 24, 2008

Telemarketation: the act of scaring away telemarketers

I'm responsible for responding to someone's work cell phone while he is away on holidays. There is the off-chance that there could be some sort of work emergency and not everyone has my contact information in the event of something like that. However, it is also used as a personal phone and consequently I expect to receive a few confused personal calls from people who don't know that he is away.

Today, I got a moderately strange call.

"Hi, could I please speak to the person responsible for the gas bill?"

"I'm sorry - which?"

"The gas bill"

"Um, he's not available right now, could I take a message?"

"No, I'll call back.

At first I thought, I probably should have said it was me, knowing she is going to call back and get me and I will probably end up paying the bill for him. However, it occurred to me that if it was HIS gas company, they would have at least known his name. Hell, even most telemarketers have SOME name to go by. So it sounds like this is just a cold, unwanted, call. And no, I'm not above angrily chasing away telemarketers on someone else's phone. Here's hoping she waits at least two weeks to call back, eh?

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