How did things come to this? My wife takes a phone call.
Caller: (Young woman's voice) Is Michael there?
(Eyebrow raised.) Can I ask who's calling?
Caller: It's Tiffany B[last name redacted].
(We don't know any Tiffanies.) And what is this about?
Caller: (Pause.) I'm calling from the Obama campaign.
Okay, thank you but we're going to give online.
Caller: Ugh. (Hang up.)
Wikipedia has a spot-on definition this "Ugh":
an onomatopoeiac representation of an aspirated sigh or gasp, used as an interjection to express repugnance, annoyance, aggravation, irritation, disgust, or boredom.
Read on for the full story.
After sitting out the primaries, I was all set to make my first direct contribution to the Obama campaign. While they still really need to rein in their graphic designer and their spooky translucent orwellian style guide, I was happy with the execution of the campaign until a few days ago.
Now, I prefer to give online, and I don't appreciate getting called at home, but since it's for a worthy cause and these callers have a generally thankless job, I'll answer the phone and probably would have made a contribution by phone just to boost morale.
So that's when the calls started.
First at dinner, when after I said I was busy but I'd be giving online, the caller was very assertive about trying to take my contribution over the phone. If you've every gotten a fundraising call from a gruff law enforcement type with one of those policeman's benevolent associations, that's what this was like. And that's pretty much a turn-off, so I ended it with "we'll give online" and goodbye.
Then there was at least one phone message. Maybe more.
Then we were meeting with some vendors to do some home improvement work when the phone rang and my wife answered. It sounded like a telemarking sales call to me where she tried to politely get off the phone and kept getting cut off and talked over. I'm like, "just say thank you and hang up", but then she says it's the Obama people "again". So feeling obligated to be polite, it took several minutes for her to extricate herself to "we'll give online and goodbye".
But here's the coup de grace. I was moving a particularly heavy piece of our twins' new castle bunk bed up the stairs. Midway through the phone rings and my wife answers. Here, again, is her account of the conversation.
Caller: (Young woman's voice) Is Michael there?
(Eyebrow raised.) Can I ask who's calling?
Caller: It's Tiffany B[last name redacted].
(We don't know any Tiffanies.) And what is this about?
Caller: (Pause.) I'm calling from the Obama campaign.
Okay, thank you but we're going to give online.
Caller: Ugh. (Hang up.)
Wikipedia has a spot-on definition this "Ugh":
an onomatopoeiac representation of an aspirated sigh or gasp, used as an interjection to express repugnance, annoyance, aggravation, irritation, disgust, or boredom.
We've gotten calls from Republicans that are more polite than this one, and that's when we tell them there's no way in hell we'd give them anything.
So, that's it. Between that and now FISA and insert-your-own-under-the-bus-metaphor for Wes Clark, we're done. For now.