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| To be fair, I cropped out the credit for the picture -- Morsy I.M. |
Calling all,
Cold callers,
Telephone spammers and slammers,
Robo callers, both human and electronic,
English language callers,
Quasi English language callers,
Church going callers,
Political party callers,
Poll taking callers,
Phishing callers,
Solar system callers,
Communication system callers,
Sheep callers,
Hog callers, as well as the occasional yodeling caller that slips through.
Do not expect a friendly voice at the other end of your ear if the other end starts with 925 and ends in 079. No way. So start from there and be sure that either my warped sense of humor or my acidic sense of sarcasm, not to mention my thunderous sense of anger, will be punctuated by a sudden dark silence [there is no "hang-up" bang with cell phones :-(].
That's what you can expect from me, unless the results of your solid family upbringing shine through, starting with an instantaneous friendly greeting. If you are nothing but the extension of a robo call, you're doooomed with absolutely no redemption possible. NONE. Not even if I am too slow to disconnect and you happen to pipe up quickly enough with a cheery greeting followed by, get this, your name, and the name of your p...no, sorry, employer.
What just happened to me broke every single one of my personal guidelines. No, there was one that was obeyed, "Thou shalt not call after 19:00 hours - 7:00 PM." So, back to the moment we're talking about.
1. The initial 5 to 7 seconds of silence for the switch from computer to human.
2. The flood of quasi human oral noise that could only be understood by one of similar species.
3. MY loud voice saying, "Who the hell are you?"
4. More incomprehensible jabber followed by MY, "Shut the hell up."
5. Silence for about 3 - 5 seconds, then, "Oh, sorry sirrr."
6. "No you're not. You don't have enough manners in you to be sorry. If you ever call this number again, you had better be ready to practice the basic rules of telephone communications politeness." This punctuated by the lack of a "hang-up" bang but the emphatic presence of the totally black cloud of doomsday silence.
After this, the Voice from the Kitchen arrived from her stint in the gainful employment world and she caught me smiling like the Cheshire Cat. She knew that it was not her arrival causing the smirky smile. So, she asked. I kid you not. I confessed. I actually told the truth, the whole truth, right to her face.
That's when the incongruity of my behavior of barely five minutes before her entry struck us both. Well, actually it struck her and she began to rain baseball sized hail and brimstone pellets on my totally laughter consumed being. Here I was telling some poor soul who is trying to make a living (honest or not, doesn't matter) to be POLITE while I was being a top ten candidate of BOORISH behavior in the 21st century. I hope that after she hung up, the caller who had just been abused found a way to see the same humorous side of the happening that we did.
Really, lady, that's just the way I am. Just ask those who know me, especially my kin.
