No More Morbid Fun With Telemarketers

Well, it appears my fun with telemarketers is over. The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) has created a “Deceased Do Not Contact” list to give family members the ability to remove the names of deceased loved ones from mass-marketing efforts.

I was a little sad to hear this for reasons that you might find somewhat disturbing. You see, back in the days before the “Do Not Call” list went into effect and my wife decided to put our number on it, I use to have fun toying with telemarketers by pretending I was dead. Just so you know, I’m not one of these people–and I know there are a lot of you out there–who get evangelical about the supposed evils of telemarketing. Frankly, I never saw what the big deal was. If you didn’t want to hear someone’s sales pitch, just hang up the phone! For God’s sake, they’re just trying to sell you something and you always have the right to say “NO!” and slam the phone down.

Nonetheless, I sometimes got as annoyed as the next guy when the calls came in, especially during the dinner hour. So, to get the really pesky ones out of my life, I use to have a little fun with them. When they called for the umpteenth time and I’ve finally had it, the conversation would go something like this:

Annoying Telemarketer: “Hello, is Mr. Thierer there?”

ME: (In my most somber tone): “Um… well, um.. who is it that is calling?”

Annoying Telemarketer: “This is Amanda with the I-Want-to-Sell-You-a-Product-You-Really-Don’t-Need Association of America. Is Mr. Thierer available tonight?”

ME: “Um.. well, I don’t know how to break this to you but Mr. Thierer recently passed from this Earth.”

Annoying Telemarketer: “Oh my, I am so sorry.”

ME: “Yes, it was terrible.” (I’d sniffle and pretend to cry a little at this point). “It was a tragic fishing accident, I’m sad to report. He had too many beers on his fishing boat and fell into the lake. He was apparently slowly devoured by a passing school of trout or small mouth bass. Horrible way to go, but apparently he was unconscious at the time, so we take some comfort in that.”

Annoying Telemarketer: “Um.. is this some sort of joke?”

ME: “NO it’s not some sort of joke! Have you no respect for the dead, Madame?!?”

Annoying Telemarketer: “Oh listen, I’m really sorry. I will let you go now.”

ME: “Well, were you a friend of his? Because I can give you directions to the wake. There won’t be a viewing of the body, of course. But it would mean a lot to us if you were there. He didn’t have many friends.”

Annoying Telemarketer: “Uh.. no. Listen, I’ll let you go now.”

ME: “Well, wait a minute now! You called me and got me thinking about my dead brother and now you don’t even have the decency to spend a minute on the phone helping me work through this? Who knows, I might actually buy your product or service from you if you just give me a few minutes of your time. So, anyway, what are you selling tonight?”

Annoying Telemarketer: “Oh… well sir,” she’d say, reversing gears faster than a race car driver, “tonight I actually have a wonderful vacation package to offer you if you’d just be willing to come down to a seminar at our local office and hear a few words from our regional director of…” (You now how the rest of that one goes.)

It never failed. As soon as I told them that I might be a buyer, they’d go right back to being sellers and forget about that poor dead brother of mine and his horrific fishing accident. And I had other tales too. Poor Adam Thierer probably died a thousand tragic deaths between the years of 1985 and 2005, when the “Do Not Call” list was established.

But now that the “Do Not Call the Dead” list has arrived, it appears my fun at the telemarketers expense has come to a close. Now they’ll just add my name to some giant Database of the Dead and my wife will probably start getting condolence letters in the mail from insurance salesmen. (It never really ends, does it?)

I know all this was terribly childish–and even somewhat morbid–and I still get lectures from my wife about it for those reasons. But hey, it was cheap thrills and it almost always got the really annoying ones to stop calling! So, you can’t knock the results.

And it’s probably just as well my fun with telemarketers has come to an end. My kids where starting to look at me funny when I told random strangers on the phone that Dad was dead.

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