I'LL NEVER GET THEM BACK

This pet peeve doesn’t rise to the level the WTF entries over on Women On awhile back. It’s just really, really, really irritating. Anybody else out there getting tired of unasked for phone calls that feature one or all of the following.

A caller who can’t speak English.

A caller who has a barely understandable accent.

A phone connection that sounds like someone put a microphone next to a bowl of rice crispies and put a pillow between them.

Or on a really bad day; all three of the above. I had a call like that this morning.

I think the caller’s name was Jason, or something like that. He repeated it three times and I never did get it. The accent wasn’t too bad, so maybe his name really was Jason or something like that. I believe he was asking me to participate in a survey of some kind sponsored by a company whose name I never got. However, after the above three tries about one word in five was making it out of the rice crispy bowl and past the pillow. At that point it was “hey, I can’t hear you, I can’t understand you, and I think you need a better phone set up. Good by.”

Well, there’s two minutes of my life I’ll never get back.

It’s what seems to be the attitude behind calls like this that mystifies me. Somebody is paying for this. They’re paying the people making the calls, they’re paying for the equipment; but, these calls are so far from “just good enough” they’re in the next state.