One more irritation

Life in two small parishes is extremely quiet, with the exception of calls from telemarketers. On a busy day here we may receive ten telephone calls, as was the case this past Friday.

The first call of the day was someone wanting to reserve one of the parish halls. Another caller wanted to schedule a wedding. Of the remaining calls, two callers hung up after the first ring and before I could get to the phone. The remaining calls were telemarketers, three from companies wanting to sell me religious education textbooks for our parish school, which does not exist.

This has become a routine pattern so yesterday I added the parish's number to the National Do Not Call Register. It takes up to thirty-one days for the addition to take effect, so we'll see if it has an effect in the end.

So far today there have been three phone calls, one concerning an upcoming ski trip for the youth, one was a person who refused to speak when I answered, and the other - you guessed it - a telemarketer.

Here, the conversation:

Me: Good morning, Sacred Heart.

Him: Yes, good morning. Could I speak with the person who handles your AT&T account.

Me: We don't have an AT&T account [we really don't].

Him: I'm sorry...

And with that, I hung up.