Every rose has its thorn

February 7, 2008

I never in my life thought I would be deciding between a female candidate and a black candidate for President. As if that weren’t exciting enough, it looks like our primary vote here in Virginia will actually make a difference, something else I thought would never happen in my lifetime. If interdimensional aliens landed on the Virginia Tech drillfield and registered for undergraduate Forestry & Wildlife classes, well, it’s been that kind of a year. And it’s only February.

I’m excited. But unfortunately it also marks the beginning of Robocall season:

[Jeffrey] Fournier, whose company serves hundreds of local, statewide and national campaigns, admitted the calls can be “offensive,” but said it’s not any more offensive than ads on television or radio. “An interruption is an interruption,” he said.

There’s robocalls and then there’s autodialers. The way an autodialer works is like this: you feed the computer a list of phone numbers. The computer rings several of the numbers at once, and since a lot of calls will be answering machines or no-answers, the computer dials more than can actually be fielded. The phones that are answered first get distributed to either the robot or human prepared to pitch whatever snake-oil you’re selling. Once all those are occupied, however, anyone else who answers the phone hears dead air.

That’s why the phone rings and you’re standing there going “Hello? Hello? Hello?”

Since we’re on the do-not-call list we’ve been left at relative peace. But now our primary votes matter and someone (or someones) has us on an autodialer. We’re slow answering a phone, so we always get the dead air. It could be a candidate, or it could be a polling outfit, or it could be a push-poll funded by an outside entity intended to tick me off against someone else. We don’t know, because we’re talking to emptiness. “Hello? Hello? Hello?”

Everyone talks to us by email and instant messenger though, they’ve long since given up on us having our cell phones on. So until the primary is over our home phone has been forwarded directly to voice mail. I’m sick of putting the DVD on pause just so a machine can hang up on me.

Posted in Grumbles