But I don't know if I'd really do it. I don't want to be rude to these people. They're only doing a job, probably a poorly paid job. It still pisses me off though. There was a third call last week, and before I describe it, a brief technical interlude is in order.
Telemarketing is big business.
Hundreds of people might be working on a marketing campaign, annoying thousands upon thousands of people trying to enjoy their dinner. And to maximise their productivity and annoy as many people as possible, the big call centres have a piece of technology called a predictive dialler. The predictive dialler is given a list of phone numbers, and is told how many telemarketers are ready to make calls. It automatically starts ringing the phone numbers, and rings more than the telemarketers can handle, because it estimates how many calls are going to result in nobody answering, or an engaged signal, or a fax machine or answering machine or voicemail. When an actual human answers, it puts the call through to a telemarketer, perhaps along with some details of the victim onto the telemarketer's computer screen.