Turning off Telemarketers (part 2)

I promised a follow-up with some additional ideas on dealing with telemarketers and unwanted phone calls, and it took me a little longer to getting around to this post since it's been such a busy week.

Anyway, in my last post on the subject, I talked about using certain technologies (albeit the basic ones) that help, but this post is going to be more about the way that we interact with the technology in order to deal with those calls.

What I find interesting is how we have tools to help us in our lives, but some people become slaves to those tools. Of course telemarketers rely on our willingness to let them interrupt us, and then allow them to engage us in conversations.

The classic example is the phone. It rings, and as reliably as one of Pavlov's dogs, some people run to the phone and answer it, no matter what. Maybe they are reading to their child, they have their hands tied up making cookies, or they are willing to risk breaking a leg by jumping out of the shower onto the slippery floor and running to the phone -- only to find a telemarketer on the other end.

I don't get it. Is it that people expect that Ed McMahon is going to be calling to tell them that they won the sweepstakes and if they miss it, they'll be passed up for somebody else?

My wife was one of these people. Despite the fact that we had caller ID and an answering machine, she had to pick up the phone even when the caller ID said "Unavailable" or "Anonymous Caller" or "XYZ Marketing".

So I'm at the table reading a magazine after dinner, and the phone rings, the caller ID announces "Unavailable" and I don't budge. She's doing something in the kitchen sink and her hands are wet, so she asks, "Are you going to get that?" "Nope," I reply.

So she gives me an exasperated expression, dries her hands and rushes over to the phone only to engage a telemarketer who can't pronounce our name correctly.

Chuckling, I ask, "Why can't you let it go? It's clearly nobody that we know calling since it's coming from a blocked number."

She insists that you never can tell. It might be somebody we know. But if it is, and if it's important, they'll leave a message on the answering machine, and then we'll know who it is, and we can always pick up then, right?

I have to say that in more recent times, she's gotten better with ignoring the unknown callers, but I still frustrate her when our phone announces the caller ID and it's somebody that we do know and I don't move to pick up the phone when we're both busy.

"Why aren't you going to answer it!?" Well, because I don't really feel like talking to somebody right now. I'm in the middle of a chapter in a book, this is my private reading time, and I don't care for the interruption right now.

When I am involved with my kids, and the phone rings, I often ignore it, because in general, my kids are a higher priority than the other person who is calling me. Other times, maybe I'm enjoying the song on the radio and I consider that to be of higher importance than the actual phone call. Or maybe I'm just too tired right no to talk to my friend who's calling me, and I don't think that I would serve them well by having a conversation when I'm just too beat to give them my full attention.

The point of this post is that despite having technology to help us manage our lives better, we have to make sure that it doesn't start to control us. We should employ the technology intelligently and not lose site of the actual reasons why we have the technology.

Stop and think about it for a moment: Are there any technologies that might be controlling you? Are there technologies that should help you to be effective, but instead seem to make you less effective? What can you do to turn those situations around? Leave a comment with your thoughts.