I just spent six minutes and forty-eight seconds on the phone with a telemarketer. I spoke for about thirty seconds of that, always with something negative to say. Think about that. Someone just spent a tenth of an hour talking at me, despite the mounting evidence that I was not interested.

We get a lot telemarketer phone calls for some reason. They usually ask for one of my roommates. This guy asked for Mr. Hernandez. We’ve received a lot of calls for Mr. Hernandez. Apparently he had the number before us. When I told today’s caller that Mr. Hernandez is no longer at this number he informed me that I had “been selected for [blah blah blah]”. I asked how I could have been selected when he didn’t even know who I was (all he knew was that I wasn’t Mr. Hernandez). His response: “oh that’s not a problem, we can sign you up anyway”.

Almost every telemarketer that calls me starts his or her pitch with a good 3-4 seconds of silence. I usually hang up during that period. I operate under the theory that anyone who actually valued my time would not wait 3-4 seconds after hearing “hello?”. Friends ask me, “What if it was someone important?” Sometimes I wait (as I did today) just to confirm that it’s a telemarketer. Otherwise, I assume that someone important would either (1) start talking after I say “hello?” or (2) call back thinking we got disconnected. I’ve probably hung up on silence about fifty times. No one has ever called back.

Funny thing I just remembered: Today’s caller asked if I was “the man of the house.” This caught me off guard. I replied, “I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking. What do you mean by ‘man of the house’?” He responded, “Are twenty-one or older?” There you have it – sixteen to drive, eighteen to buy porn, twenty-five to rent a car without the extra insurance charge, and twenty-one to be “the man of the house”.

Maybe I would have done better using a script.