Usually the way that phone solicitation is received in my house is that once the intention of the caller in known, they are met with a “I'm not interested thank you”…. and then are hung up upon. Tonight, just minutes ago actually, I got a call that was a bit different.
Women's voice: Hello – we are doing a clothing drive. Is the man of the house there?
First of all, this was different. I haven't heard that question in 15-20 years. I should have claimed to be the “lady” of the house just to confuse things right off the start. Hindsight, you know.
So…. my preprogrammed response was…. “I'm not interested thank you“. Then I hung up, of course.
Then she phones back! This time she sounds annoyed….. she managed to start explaining something about a school… a clothing drive…. before I YELLED into the phone “I told you I'm not interested DAMMIT – stop pestering me or I'll have to call YOU back!“. Then I hung up in a determined manner. I don't know why she pissed me off so much, but perhaps it was this “how dare you hang up on me!” attitude. All this at 9pm.
While I admit my response was slightly harsh, usually these people just give up, as they should, and move on to the next target. I sense she's new at this. If she continues in this manner, I suspect that she'll get even more intense responses. Especially when she calls back to talk about it further!
The other day i was visiting a friend of mine who works in the aquarium room in a pet store. Some guy came in and wanted to know if he could use goldfish to do an experiment for his Vertebrate Biology course. This was interesting. He was in third year, and I have no idea why he was allowed to get that far. However, I had some fun because I got to put my biology hat back on after a bit of an absence and talked to him about design, ways of coming up with experiment ideas (often the hardest part), planning ahead with your design with stats in mind (something I learned in 1st year ARTS courses, but seems to be absent from my Universities science department) etc…. Then I torpedoed the whole thing by suggesting a natural selection angle on a particular idea we were discussing. It seemed he went to the Christian University nearby, and not only do they not teach evolution there, the mere mention of it is apparently quite offensive. I'm surprised they are even offering a biology program. No matter what you believe…. how can you teach a “complete” biology program without a mention of evolution or natural selection etc?