Dinner-Hour Call So Tasteless It’ll Turn Your Stomach

I have complained before about that most intrusive of sales pitches--the dinner-hour phone call advising you that you have won a trip to Hawaii or offering you a deal on remodeling your house or applying some kind of tex to your exterior.

Evidently they call during what they think is the dinner hour because that is the time you and your spouse are most likely to be at home and not engaged in something demanding, like watching sex and violence on television.

You cannot simply ignore the phone, because that is also the hour when you are most likely to get a call from a family member. Your gorge rises as the caller responds to your answer with “Hello! Is this Mr. Jack Smith?” (Or Mrs. Smith, as the case may be.)

At this point I am inclined to hang up. But, of course, hanging up is discourteous, and I am not discourteous. Besides, I respect these people for trying to make an honest living, instead of holding up liquor stores or mugging citizens on the sidewalk. I say, “Yes,” and the caller then says, “How are you today?”

I am inclined to say that I have a terminal malfunction of the pancreas, but I find it difficult to lie, even to telephone pests. I usually say, “I’m all right. What is it?”

If the caller wants to remodel my house, he at this point says, “Are you the owner?”

I have learned to say that yes, I am the owner, but I don’t need to remodel. I have just remodeled.

The caller usually tells me to have a nice day and hangs up.

Some time ago one of these people got hold of my wife and told her we had already won a glorious vacation trip, free of charge. Curious, my wife expressed interest. We wound up driving down to Carlsbad to collect our prize.

Our destination was a beachfront condominium complex whose units were being sold for shared occupancy. I was not interested. I do not care to share my living quarters with anyone else. I don’t want to find somebody else’s pajamas in my closet or somebody else’s ring in my bathtub.

But we had to sit down and listen to a young saleswoman’s pitch. Then I said, “I do not want to buy a condominium today.” She then gave us a voucher to pick up our prize, a trip to Lake Tahoe. By bus. The bus left Los Angeles at 6 a.m. We didn’t go.

Since then we have won several exotic vacations, but haven’t accepted any.

I am puzzled by the calls from financial houses wanting to invest our money. I tell them our money is already invested. And that we aren’t interested in any other investments.

They are incredulous. “I don’t understand,” they say. “You mean you aren’t interested in making money?

“No,” I have learned to say. “We don’t want any more money.”

Sometimes they laugh. Sometimes they argue. Usually they hang up.

I reopen this subject to report on the most outrageous pitch I have received yet. I was at home alone when the phone rang and I found myself talking with what sounded like a young man.

We went through the usual preliminaries. “Is this Mr. Jack Smith? . . . How are you today?”

He said he was with some construction company whose name I have forgotten. As they always do, he said his company was offering a remodeling discount for my neighborhood.

I told him we had recently remodeled. He said, “That isn’t what your neighbors say.” I was incredulous. “What do you mean?” I said. He said, “Your neighbors say you ought to remodel.”

I was shocked. Our neighbors were complaining, by implication, that our house was an eyesore? What neighbors? I didn’t believe him.

Incensed, I told him, “We have just remodeled our house at a cost of $150,000.” Immediately I was sorry that I had quoted the cost; it was none of his business. But I was that angry.

Incredibly, he then said, “Have you got the receipts to prove it?

I was staggered. He not only had lied about the neighbors’ calling my house an eyesore but also had accused me of lying about remodeling, and now he was demanding that I offer proof that I was telling the truth.

I said, “That’s none of your (expletive) business,” using an expletive that I almost never use.

“Oh, excuse me!” he said with mock contrition. “I’m hanging up right now.”

“Do that,” I said, and tried to beat him to it.

The trouble is, I’m now beginning to wonder if one of our neighbors did say our house was an eyesore, and if so, which one it was. I’d like to call him up and give him the same pitch.