17 July 2008

What's Missing?

Yesterday I got a rather annoying telemarketing call. It was their third attempt.

See, Monday morning they called after our family had come back to town on a red-eye flight from San Francisco. When they asked for me, hubby asked who was calling. And then they hung up. Yeah, thanks.

Two days ago they called and I told them the baby was crying and we were sitting down to dinner. The girl apologized for interrupting, and we hung up.

Yesterday I realized I was going to have to talk to these people, to at least have my name removed from their list. I recognized the number on the caller ID as the same e that had been calling each day, and I answered the phone. I found out the caller was the Democratic National Committee (or something along those lines…you get the drift).

The gentleman calling went right into telling me about how much we’ve all suffered with Bush, and saying that McCain would bring us more of the same misery. After tossing around a few political buzzwords about recession, military actions and doom and gloom, he asked for my ‘help’ in getting our democratic candidate into the White House. To be specific, he wanted $100 of my help.

I told him I didn’t have income (close enough to the truth). He started sympathizing with me about how rough the job market is for all of us. I was tempted to tell him that I didn’t work outside the home as a CHOICE, and I was staying home to raise my daughter as I saw best. Instead I decided to save my breath. He was annoying me too much to try and further engage him in conversation.

As he stuttered and attempted to ask me for some ‘help’ of a lesser dollar value, I asked him to please remove my name from their call list. I told him that I was tired of hearing from them, and my husband was tired of being hung up on. He tried to assure me that IF my husband was hung up on, it was an accident. Yeah, right.

I was thinking afterward about what bothered me about the call. I am a registered voter, and registered as a democrat, so I might have been somewhat supportive of their call. I think I figured out the two things that bugged me most:
  1. The mudslinging. If he said anything positive about Obama, other than in comparison to Bush or McCain, I didn’t hear it. I don’t watch much TV of any informational value (unless you count What Not To Wear). News shows depress me, and for the rest of this year, I HATE the negativity surrounding the campaigns. Please don’t bring the one thing I’m avoiding into my house.
  2. Not once did he ask me to vote. If he’s that confident of his cause, all he should have needed to do is be sure that I planned to get out that and cast my intelligent vote with the right candidate. He only wanted my money, not my true support. Bummer.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's crappy. I have actually worked on republican camps in the past and the only calls I made were the "get out and vote" calls. Usually people were like, Hell yeah I'm going to vote! I don't think they should talk bad about the other party either. It makes them look bad.

Michelle said...

That's terrible that they kept hanging up on you. We have been getting the same phone calls. I guess it's that political season again. LOL!! My husband's uncle Bob Alexander (only by marriage) is running against Mike Rogers for congress. Bob Alexanders politcal team keeps calling our house and asking for money. Money that we don't have of course. My hubby keeps telling them that they are related and if we wanted to give Bob money we would call him personally. My husband told them politly that Bob has our vote and that we don't have cash to donate but that wasn't good enough. It makes me want to scream. Ahhhh!! It's driving my husband crazy. Okay I'm done venting. Thanks for listening. LOL!!

siteseer said...

And to think, I'm missing all these calls. Do you think I can go away again before the November election? That would be nice

Melissa said...

I find it so odd that they didn't ask for the vote. No matter what party they were, that should have been one of the first things out of their mouth. Weird.

Thanks for stopping by!

Tammy said...

I think this whole campaign has been about money not what really matters.

Oh tell siteseer that her message machine is blinking a lot so I bet she has some of these messeages. She isn't getting out of this.