Hello? Is This Mr. and/or Mrs. Thompson?

I may find myself alone when I say that I feel sorry for telemarketers. I feel sorry for them because they have to call at intentionally awkward times, stick doggedly to their scripts, and can't allow themselves to respond to the ridicule that most people heap upon them. A lot of people hate their jobs but very few of us have jobs that make people hate us.

With that in mind, I try to act civilized when the phone rings right after that first bite of dinner. The callers have quotas and, as one telemarketer told me (presumably that call wasn't recorded), that each call must last a minimum amount of time for them to be paid. Whether that's true or not I haven't been able to verify. When their spiel is done I politely tell them I'm not interested and hang up. I haven't always been so considerate.

I grew up passing cold callers on to my mother. At first, I passed them to her because I wasn't the one with my hands on the family purse, but after listening to my mother decimate caller after caller it became something of a game to me. My mother was a woman who didn't appreciate her time being wasted by telemarketers and she had no problem explaining that to these salesmen and women, using some extremely colourful language. She would hang up the phone and look at me, waiting for an explanation, and all I could do was laugh.

It wasn't until I did some volunteering with the Canadian Cancer Society that I learned what it's like to be on the other end of the line with someone, like my mother, who resents the intrusion. I accepted the chore, believing that everyone understands what an important function these people play in the fight against a truly horrific disease. I learned quickly that compassion is in short supply when your dinner is growing cold.

As a result of the growing number of calls I have been getting lately, I looked into how to get myself off these call lists. It isn't easy. The most straightforward advice comes from Junkbusters.com

All you have to do is send a letter, templates of which you can find on their website, and send it to anyone you've ever given personal information to, asking to be removed from their mailing lists. This includes, incredibly, your bank, your credit card company, the hydro company, the water company, the cable company, the stores you shop in, the business' you order supplies from and the dating service you use to drum up dates. And when you're returning all those Christmas gifts, and filling out those long and intrusive return forms that most business' use to deter people from trying it again, don't forget to tell them that you don't want your information sold. Whew. Did I forget anybody?

The buying and selling of personal information to telemarketers has been going on since Nadji Tehrani trademarked the word Telemarketing. Mr. Tehrani discovered, in the seventies, that convincing people to advertise in his trade magazines was cheaper and easier if he did it over the phone. As the venerable grand-daddy of annoyance, he has a special place in my heart.

The CRTC has a page which explains how the entire process runs. Go here to fill out a form from the Canadian Marketing Association to have your information removed from marketing lists, although I have to express some doubt about giving these people any more ammunition. It's a bit like hiring a fox to guard your hen house.

In the event that none of these tactics work, I have a plan. It involves asking my mother a teach a class on phone etiquette when dealing with telemarketers. It won't be pretty. I think she's actually made up some of the more colourful descriptors I've heard her use, so you'll need a pad and pen to write these down. Unfortunately the class won't have anything to do with spam. Even my mother hasn't been able to come up with a solution for that particular form of torture.