Monday, August 06, 2007

Are you as annoyed as I am?

A certain politician has called me three times (at least) in the last two days and called me four times last week. I'm so annoyed that I can guarantee that I will not vote for the person under any circumstances. I come home to a message on my machine saying something like, "Hi. This is Debra Francesca for the _______ campaign and I want to give you a 49 second survey. (pause) It sounds like you're not there. I'll call back later. (Click)"

Ordinarily I wouldn't say anything about it but the message seems to imply that she will keep calling until I participate in the survey. I'm now screening all the calls that come on that line because I don't want to answer the darn survey.

I wish I could just pick up the phone and say, "I'm a religious. Leave me alone you state employee." and they'd have to stop calling. But, instead, I'll just keep getting annoying messages.

And we have over a year more of this!

3 comments:

nabimba said...

Have you considered changing the answering message on the phone number given to politicians and telemarketers to say:

"Hi. I'm Father Dennis, and I'm not in right now. Please join me in saying the Apostle's Creed before the beep. I believe in God..."

Fr.Dennis said...

I LOVE IT!

Jeannine Grady said...

Fr. Dennis--

It's an unfortunate fact of life that we will be bothered by unwanted phone calls. And living in Iowa, we're going to get more than our share before the caucuses. However, it might be helpful to consider the caller, when it comes to campaign calls. Most are volunteers, who for one reason or another, have decided that participation in a particular campaign is worthy of their time.

As to "robo-calls" (as it sounds like this one might be) it might also be helpful to consider that the 49 seconds it takes to complete the survey for said candidate is far less than the time you might spend avoiding the calls, and stewing over how annoying they are.

Finally, I question what your being a religious has to do with anything as regards political calls? (And what makes you think the caller is a state employee?) As you mention in another post, the Catholic church encourages participation in the political process. Being ordained does not place anyone above or outside the process--or anyone involved in it (as the hypothetical exchange you wrote sort of implies).

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