Unless you’ve been lucky enough to land yourself on a ‘do not call list,’ you experience the daily, or hourly, calls from telemarketers. They’re those obnoxious calls that always happen to be during the lunch and dinner hours with some random person on the other end trying to sell you something. As if these calls weren’t aggravating enough, sometimes the person on the other end of one of those calls asks to speak to your deceased loved one. If there’s ever a time for a warranted hang-up, that time is it.
Almost 6 years after my dad’s passing, I still receive calls from telemarketers asking for him. While I know the people are only doing their job and probably have no say about who they call, I have no problem expressing my irritation to them. I usually answer with one of the following three responses:
- I simply hang-up. Why bother wasting any more of my time talking with these people?
- I give the ever-so short and blunt response, “He died.” Then I either wait to listen for the awkwardness in their voices or hang-up. Usually I choose the latter of the two because, again, I don’t want to offer them any more of my time.
- I lie and say that he can’t come to the phone. At these moments, I’m usually too tired to even care what these people want and simply choose to dismiss them.
How is it even possible that my dad’s name is on their lists of who to call when he died 6 years ago? When you lose someone, you already have to experience the daily ups and downs of grief, why should you have to answer these bothersome calls from strangers reminding you? Come on, telemarketing companies. Stop being so careless and update your calling lists.
