I am not a cruel person.
If I had a list of personality traits ranked from 1 to 10, I’d probably have cruel at a -3 or something. On the other hand, I have a very strong anti-telemarketing bias. The two traits occasionally come into conflict.
Last week, for example.
I’d been forewarned. My dad called up to let me know that he’d given my phone number to a telemarketer. I’m still a bit baffled as to why, apart from that he wasn’t going to buy anything himself but didn’t want the guy to go away completely empty handed.
So, about ten minutes or so after getting this warning, I get a call from Daniel Valentine. Don’t bother googling for him, I’m pretty sure that wasn’t his real name.
I interrupted him before he could launch into his script and found out that he was calling from India. I did a quick check of my “Cruel (-3)” trait and let him know what he was in for.
“Daniel, you seem like a nice enough person, so I’m going to let you know how this is going to go. You’re going to waste a lot of time on the phone with me. I’m going to deliberately misunderstand everything you say. I’m going to ask a lot of stupid and pointless questions, and at the end of it all I’m not going to buy anything from you. I’m going to stay on the line until you hang up. Your day will be ruined and your company will be out however much it costs to make a call from India. You can avoid all of this just by hanging up right now.”
Sadly, he didn’t hang up right away. He tried his hardest to sell me on a Dish Network system that I neither wanted nor needed. It took about twenty minutes for him to admit defeat. I may wind up incorporating some of our conversation into the comic.