I have started monitoring telephone calls during evening hours and on weekends. It's interesting how many people will hang up on answering machines. I suspect it's people wanting to sell me something or solicit a donation. Just as well they're hanging up.

I'm usually nice to telemarketers, because I know they're trying to make a living. I don't like being interrupted to deal with them, but I do understand it's their job, etc. I have, however, been known to lose my politeness with a few of them.

A credit card company called me several times in fairly quick succession---about every two weeks. For some reason they decided I wanted to hear about their wonderful offer at 8:00 a.m. Aside from the fact that I don't need any more credit cards, that's a really bad time of day to call me, since I'm almost guaranteed to be asleep. I did finally wake up enough one morning to interrupt the caller and ask to be taken off their call list. So far, that has worked.

The one I hung up on tripped my trigger a few years ago. He was calling to try to get my mother to switch long-distance carriers, which I knew she didn't want to do. I told him I was her daughter, and that we in the household were not interested. His response was that he had to speak to Mother, whereupon I replied that no, he actually had to speak with me, since I was paying the bills. I then hung up. Technically, I was paying the bills---with her checkbook and her full knowledge, but I was the lady with the pen!

A caller who wanted me to subscribe to one of the area newspapers probably wishes she hadn't asked why I didn't want to subscribe. I was caught off-guard by the question, so I didn't sugar-coat the answer: "Because I don't like that paper!"

One caller who was surveying rather than selling got a polite response, but I feel a bit bad about lying to her. No, I didn't skew the results of the survey: the caller wanted to ask the person in the household responsible for grocery-buying some questions, and I said that person wasn't at home. Yes, I know I was here. I also knew that if I stopped to talk, my just-bought groceries would get spoiled.

It would have been better if she had reached the machine.

Have any telephone tales you'd like to tell us?