Unplugged

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This week was the primary election in our state. Oy vay! (In many ways!)

About a week ago the phone calls started coming. Every doodah person running for dog catcher was calling to insist persuade me to vote for him.

The calls started at 7 a.m.! Seriously? That’s before my coffee! If you call before my coffee I am for sure not voting for you.

The first step we tried was to turn down all the ringers. All the way back. It’s rare that we get a phone call. Most people email us. We check that several times a day. We forget about our phone’s answering machine. (I’m pretty sure Publisher’s Clearing House comes to the door with a big check so there are no worries there.)

What else would we miss? That the IRS is after us and we need to send money to someone in Bangladesh?

The ringer change was helpful but it didn’t stop the calls. We could still hear them. Four rings, then the answering message, then some stupid message until our machine cuts them off. (Folks, this is not the way to win an election!)

After about the 15th call by 1 p.m. I noticed a button that shuts off the answering machine. Damn! Why didn’t I think of that earlier?

Pop and the thing was off. Most callers went for a max of 6 rings but there was one tenacious bastard that kept ringing until the beloved husband picked up the phone and slammed it down. (Hopefully that wasn’t the Nigerian prince who is in deep doo-doo and needs our help.)

If you think I’m kidding, my phone listed 49 missed phone calls for Monday. We are lucky if we get two legitimate phone calls a week. You know legitimate – from someone we know or a notice of a doctor’s appointment. In reality we get more of the latter than the former.

About the same time this started with the phone calls, my spam filter on my emails stopped working. Perhaps it’s on vacation. Without me. (Not nice! I like umbrella drinks too!) Not only am I getting all those insipid drug ads for ailments I don’t have but I’m getting doubles, 20 minutes apart.

I jacked up my junk level to high (that means I can only get emails from my deceased mother). I figured I could check my junk mail and see what it was catching that shouldn’t be there. It didn’t matter. I continued to get offers for low rate mortgages and Dr. Oz’s newest pill.

There is a conspiracy going on. I only hope that with the primary over things will settle down. As for putting the answering machine back on, we’ll see about that. Being unplugged isn’t a bad thing. You want to contact me? Send me an email instead.

If you are that Nigerian prince, my prayers are with you (but not my money).

49 thoughts on “Unplugged”

  1. Hope its all over now, we are going to the polls too here in Australia too. Its such a worry because I have no idea who could do a better job its slim pickings as they say. No calls here thankfully I have had those annoying pre-recorded ones before.

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  2. It’s horrendous. Even if your primary is over, they all sob they need more money. Last of August and early Nov. We may just have to bury the cell phones/computers in the yard to stay sane.
    One idiot was sending out texts at almost midnight…I guess the logic is that you will see it first thing in the morning and act immediately before you get busy. Really? Someone please – we want to sleep even if you don’t (I must turn off “alerts” on the phone at night…but then there’s tornadoes or something. grrrrrr)

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  3. We have two caucuses in Washington state and a primary. Go figure. I spent all morning at the Democratic caucus a month or two ago. It was a crowded affair, but mildly interesting. I even gave a little speech about the candidate I preferred. It was early enough in the election cycle that people were still cordial. I suspect if it had been held today, tempers would have been shorter. Anyway, I don’t remember getting many annoying calls before the caucus.

    Our primary is on May 24, so we’ll see if anyone still cares by then what voters in WA think.

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  5. If you get a call from “Unknown Name” (his/her phone number is 000-000-0000) could you ask them to take my number off their list also? Please?

    It usually takes a month for us to build up 45 unnecessary calls. We don’t answer our home phone at all even letting the dr. office leave appt. reminder messages. I don’t want to give the land line up because in case of an emergency… I don’t have to worry if the dang thing is charged.

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    • We are like you in that we keep it for emergencies. We also rarely answer it preferring to pick up the messages when we remember. In the past few decades we haven’t had a message that anything great happened — you know like lottery win or maybe a lottery win. We are useless in getting numbers of the list as you can see.

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  6. You have my sympathy. California’s primary is so late, the candidates have long been decided, picked a running mate, and started measuring for drapes at the White House before we ever even get to vote. This year, however, they say that California will still be in play for our primary. Your post is making me wish for the good old days when Iowa and New Hampshire got to decide for all of us. My phone already rings off the hook with solar companies. Add candidates and I will also have to turn something off!

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    • Drape choices are important. It’s something you need to list when you put your name on the ballot for consideration. I wish they would all be the same day. It would make more sense to me but I expect the media does better stretching it out over many months.

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  7. Our primary is on June 7. I’m not sure when the calls will start coming, but you can be sure we will turn the ringer off. We don’t have an actual land-line (we got rid of that during the last major election), so we’ll see if they have our Ooma number. I already know who I am going to vote for and certainly no amount of irritating calls will change my mind.

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  11. 7:00 AM?? That’s crazy! Our unwanted calls dropped off a lot when we moved from the suburbs to the country. I guess moving out of an affluent zip code does the trick.

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  12. Wow. I have known for a while that I am out of touch with the States – but this is amazing to me. I had no idea it was so bad with the robo-calls etc.. Hard to believe that any vote can be gained by disturbing people in their own homes.

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  13. If my husband would only change his affiliation from “independent” to ANYTHING else, I’d be so happy. The volume and frequency of Donald Trump robocalls is killing me.

    Also, Trump’s voice makes the dog howl incessantly. I know exactly how he feels.

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  14. Wow, that’s incredible. Even when we lived in California we never got that many political calls. I thought for sure prior to the Florida primary that we’d be inundated, but thankfully we never even got one. Of course, God knows what will happen in the fall. You were smart to unplug.

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    • I don’t know what happened and they weren’t all political calls. Most left no messages so they weren’t political for sure. It was a crazy day. Tuesday and Wednesday were quiet. Go figure.

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  15. I hang my head in shame. I used to be one of those political callers. For years, I called and tried to convince people to vote my way. Never before noon, never after 8. In the old days it was very effective.

    But I won’t do it any more because everybody has had it with the calls and they are no longer effective. In fact, they go the opposite way.

    I promise you though, it was not me calling you. Not this year, anyway!

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  16. Like nrhatch, we have a basic answering machine so we just listen and then decide whether to answer or not. It saves a lot of frustrations and, if we are out, we don’t miss any calls from family and friends as they just leave messages. 🙂

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    • That’s what we do except the increased flow of calls for the election was annoying. Most friends/family email or text anyway so no getting messages didn’t affect us. We did put the answering machine back on but mostly for doctor’s offices.

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  17. Our phone rings twice before rolling over to the answering machine. Since most people we do NOT want to talk to do NOT leave messages . . . those two little rings are easy enough to ignore.

    If someone we do NOT want to talk to does start to leave a message when I’m not interested in listening to them drone on and on and on and on . . . I pick up and replace the receiver to shut them up.

    The NRA has been calling for weeks now. Not sure what they want since they have yet to leave a message. YAY!

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  18. Spam calls & mails ARE irritating, aren’t they?? Our service provider’s website has a snazzy little thing that has become my best friend: A function to block a number from ever calling again! I just add that number to a “black-list”, and wa-la, they can no longer call us. Another tactic I’ve used is to quietly set the phone down and let them keep on talking until they’re blue in the face, while I get on with my writing. Eventually, if they have half a brain, they’ll hang up; except that if I don’t hang up, they can’t make another call (that’s the system here in Switzerland, anyway)… If all else fails, interrupt them and start ordering pizza from them, or interrogating them about a murder investigation… 🙂 Turn the tables on them and have fun at their expense!

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    • My husband is intent on keeping the land line. Probably because we don’t use our cell phones but use them for emergency only. We have looked into blocking robocalls but it’s cumbersome. Turning everything down has helped considerably.

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  20. I feel your pain. We have the same problem here. I’ve taken to answering the ringing phone, saying nothing, laying the phone down and just letting the canned message play out into the air. This way, the robocaller has completed its assigned task, and moves on leaving us alone… for a few days at least. I don’t know how much longer we’re going to keep our land line. This kind of calling is nonsense.

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    • People say (and who knows if it’s true) if you answer it confirms that your number is legit. There is never a real person at the end. We switched our land line from a phone carrier to our cable carrier and it’s improved things a lot. There is a system for blocking robocalls but the carriers won’t install. Must be some money going on somewhere.

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      • Kate, never heard that about confirming the number, but sure, sounds like it could be true. We tried the robocall block, via a national system that claims to do this, and we got fewer calls. But now with politics ramping up again, the idiot calls have returned.

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        • There are too many exceptions to the law (charities, political calls, anyone you’ve done business with in the past, etc.) and not enough prosecutions to be effective. On Wednesday our phone didn’t ring at all. I guess we are back to normal. Maybe. Sort of. Actually no calls is not really normal.

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