Dear Telemarketers,

You are getting crazy. Do you think we don’t know what you are doing? It may have fooled us in the beginning, but now, we know your tricks.

Did you know that I am usually aware of the businesses who are my support team, my vendors, suppliers and consultants. I also know that they are not in my market; I know that they have a foreign area code – and that’s totally fine. I will pick up the phone – as long as I know you are there to help and not to keep pushing unwanted services.

A simple check in call once or twice a year is a good thing. I welcome hearing from you.

However, when you try to disguise yourself by cloning (or whatever you call it) with a local area exchange and I don’t know who it is – I won’t pick up the phone.  I pretty much know all of the local numbers that are calling my number.  I even have pictures associated with a lot of my contacts – even the suppliers, vendors and consultants.

If my caller ID says the incoming call is from XYZ company, I will talk to you. Stop trying to fool me into thinking that you’re local ’cause you’re not.

Now, before you get your switchboard all in an uproar…

I know everybody talks about “shop local” and I support that. At the same time, I also know that not everything can come from right around the corner and we shop on Amazon. My delivery driver is local. They pay local taxes, they fill up their car here.

At the same time, we know that Target is owned, operated and managed by a corporation based in Minneapolis, but we still love Target and we still go there. Again, I recognize the woman at the front desk, she is one of the moms from school; I recognize the check out counter employee, he has been there a couple of years and is not only pleasant, he appreciates when I bring my own bags – and is still pretty quick to fill them.

All of that said, I still may want our eggs to come from the local farm… we may want our coffee to be roasted right down the street… or, we may want our coffee to be roasted where ever Starbucks roasts their coffee from Sumatra.

Not everything has to be local; especially not some of the people who are pretending to offer us support…

• Lower my credit card interest rate.
• Reduce my back pain.
• Tell us what you think about your government and hear what we have to say, too.
• Get 60 more days of Sirius for just $34.99 and get a bonus 120 days more just because you’re you…

I’d rather know that the anything-but-sweet, dear telemarketers; the ones who won’t take no for an answer, the ones who probably don’t even feel bad when you hang up on them, do not live in our area. I’d like to think they live in a far off, land where I won’t run into them, because I do not feel bad ignoring the call or even, pretending to be a fax machine so that they take our number off their list.

~ Dawn aka Hat Girl

PS Yea, I know, they are (often) not even human any more. I am, so I would rather know the person calling and be able to decide to accept or deny their offer because I already know they have helped me before. “Thanks Joe, I’m really glad you called and yes, I would definitely…”