My sympathies, Firecat—up to a point.

I worked for a few weeks back in the early Fifties in telephone sales. Apparently I was pretty good at it because my boss said I was doing marvelously and somehow I made enough money at it (percentage of sales) to put a down payment on my first really nice guitar (a Martin 00-18 — full price, $95.00 at the time; my down payment was $15.00). But frankly, I couldn't take that much rejection. On top of that, I knew I was interrupting people in the middle of their busy day and trying to sell them something that maybe one out of 500 might actually consider buying, but probably not from some gink on the phone who rang them up just as they were going into the bathroom to take a pee. I'd have to be dangling off the side of a cliff before I'd consider taking that kind of job again—for several reasons.

Once in a while I'll play a bit with a caller as I did in my post above (I was just answering the questions the guy asked, after all), but usually, once I've ascertained that it's a sales call, I interrupt the opening pitch and politely tell the caller, "Let me save us both some time. I'm not interested. Thank you." Then I hang up without further ado.

I consider sales calls to be on a par with pop-up adds on my computer. It's a rude interruption of what I'm doing at the time and the overwhelming majority of them are nothing I would be remotely interested in anyway.

Don Firth