I apologize for the long gap in posts; believe it or not, there are actually almost a dozen in various stages of composition (perhaps decomposition, in one case). In fact, I had one just about ready to roll when I realized it was not what I wanted to write about right now.
You see, part of what has kept me off the air (so to speak) has been a fairly serious bout of exhaustion. Part of the problem is that my schedule at my "real" job ("real" is in quotes for a reason... perhaps for a future post...?), although not overnight, tends to have me returning home at a time when most of my neighbors have already been asleep for two or three hours. The result is that, in order to get anything approximating a healthy amount of sleep, I have to be sawing wood well into the morning hours.
And what, you might be asking, is so annoying about that?
Well, aside from the complications of having a schedule offset several hours from the rest of the world, this means I am attempting to sleep during the same time many companies are trying to make sales... and organizations are trying to procure donations... and politicians are trying to convince me to vote for them and/or their compatriots. As one might expect, the result is very little actual sleep.
Thus the "annoying" in this post: Junk calls and Robodialers.
For those of you who might be unfamiliar with the term, a robodialer is not the bastard offspring of Robocop and the disembodied operator one hears when making long distance phone calls. Robodialers (sometimes called "war dialers" due to their ability to carpet-bomb entire area codes with calls in very little time) are devices that will call through a list of phone numbers, one after the other, depositing a recorded message at the receiving end before immediately moving on to the next number in the list.
I have no problem with the occasional phone call from a charity seeking donations... but things have really gotten out of hand. We are in an election year (like I really had to remind you, right?) so what seems like hundreds of pollsters, politicians, political party representatives, political endorsers and endorsees, and interest groups have all added their robodialers to the pre-existing chorus of magazine subscription companies, charities, cable television companies, phone companies, alternative power providers, et al.
In addition to the occasional mistaken call from a politician or group very much at odds with my personal beliefs who believe I'm a supporter of theirs, I am getting "personal" calls from: politicians
The handsets for the wireless phone in my home have small screens on which they display Caller ID data for each incoming call; to date I have received more calls from "Unavailable" than anyone else, followed closely by "Out of Area" or "Texas" (apparently the entire Lone Star State is calling me...?) and then Godonlyknows how many assorted companies and collections of seemingly random letters attached to 800 or 866 numbers.
The surge in calls began in late February, but what seemed like a passing wave has assumed the proportions of the recent tsunami in Japan. During a phone conversation with a friend this past Monday, I heard the familiar Call Waiting "beep" three times in slightly less than ten minutes; each time it was "Out of Area" or "Unavailable" (my phone thankfully displays Caller ID data for incoming calls even when I'm already on the line). On Wednesday -- when I had called out sick from my job and spent most of the day attempting to sleep -- I counted no fewer than 17 of these calls between 8:00 and 10:00am (at which point I gave up and blearily moved to the living room sofa). When I returned home from work Thursday night (technically it was well into Friday morning), there were so many political endorsements on my answering machine that it began playback with a warning that it had less than 30 seconds of free recording time left out of a 12 minute allotment.
It is somewhat difficult to be annoyed when "exhausted" is really how I am feeling, but annoyed I am, indeed. My home telephone has ceased to be a tool I can use to communicate with friends and family; it has become a conduit through which seemingly every business, pollster, fundraiser, and politician in the continental United States regularly and frequently invades my home in a concerted effort to interrupt whatever I am doing (correction: whatever I am trying to do despite the nonstop interruptions) and make me Pay Attention to whatever it is they happen to be peddling or requesting at that moment.
"Why don't you put your phone number on the National Do Not Call Registry?" I hear you ask.
Ah, but I did that. Quite a long time ago, in fact -- and when I re-checked just this past February, both my home and mobile numbers were still registered and "protected" by the list. Unfortunately, semi-hidden in the verbiage of the bill that created the Registry are loopholes that allow political organizations, charitable organizations, and any business with whom one has "an established business relationship" (so loosely defined as to approximate "coexisting on the same dimensional plane") to legally and safely ignore the Registry and place calls to their hearts' content. This applies even to "unlisted" and "unpublished" phone numbers, as witnessed by my parents also being assaulted by nonstop junk calls.
So what am I annoyed about? Let me take a look... Phone calls spaced an average of seven minutes apart for hours on end... Check. My phone ringing roughly every seven minutes while I am trying to sleep after a long evening at work... Check. Multiple calls from unidentifiable sources... Check. Multiple calls from unnamed sources with phone numbers that cannot be traced back to their source... Check. Robodialers leaving partial messages on my answering machine... Check. Individuals, organizations and companies calling at times of day when the majority of calls will be answered by recording devices and leaving messages ending in, "press 7 now to be removed from our list..." Check. Robodialers capable of redialing my phone endlessly at 30-second intervals... Check. The fact that the only way to stop all these calls is to cut off my friends' and family's ability to contact me as needed... Check.
You guessed it... I am annoyed. And I hope you are, as well; this is nonstop unsolicited (unwanted) "communication" that verges on harassment, and there is no recourse beyond cutting oneself off completely.
Perhaps the time has come for the citizenry to push for a real "Do Not Call" policy that is also actually enforced by the authorities...?
