The Bear Minimum

I had one of the unwanted calls last night. You know the ones, they come right as you sit down to partake of a nice supper. Yes, I had one of those last night.

I picked up the phone, and it was of course my telecoms company. Why did you choose to call now, Mr Phone Company Representative? Why would you be so inconsiderate as to call right at dinner time?

I had nary a chance to edge into the conversation, the young man on the other end of the line was off and running on his spiel. It was painfully obvious from the start that the young man was given the same speech to say to everyone, as there was far too much information packed into one-and-a-half minutes (the fellow spoke very quickly) and the greater portion of it bore no relevance to me whatsoever.

He was offering a deal if I purchased a set of telephones, or a set of cordless phones, which miraculously lead into yet more monologue, now on ‘great new rates’ on call logging services, whatever the point of that would be. By the time the young fellow launched into an offer of Panasonic KX phones I had really had enough. I had to stop him right there, partly due to the fact that I had little idea of what he was talking about, but more importantly, I detest such intrusions, especially at dinner time!

I told him that I understood he was doing his job, so asked if I could address his manager with my issues. He put a rather pompous woman on the phone, who had surprisingly bad phone etiquette, which made my complaining all the easier. I told her that the practice of calling people as they sit down to a well earned meal is heartily insensitive and rude, and that if they were going to call their customers in such a fashion, they should at the very least tailor the speech to the customer in question.

The rude lady did not take all that well to my complaint, but made a valiant effort to hide that fact. Were I not who I am, she most likely would have succeeded, but there is no fooling a scholar of the human condition! It took quite some time after that phone call for my appetite to return, but once it did, I thoroughly enjoyed my well prepared dinner.