Death Of A Telesalesman

(We’ve been being bothered by a telemarketing firm soliciting contributions for a shady-seeming charity. Their gimmick is to ask “Is ‘[Name]’ there?” and use that as a hook to segue into their script. We’d gone from saying “No, thank you.” to “NO!” to just hanging up, but they still call. I have tried saying ‘Which one? There are two [Name]s here right now.’ and the caller was able to leverage that into his spiel! I do have to give him credit for thinking that fast, though! I finally decided to try something else.)

Telemarketer: “Hi. Is [Name] there?”

Me: “I guess you didn’t hear. She finally passed away last night and is free of the pain. Were you a friend of hers?”

Telemarketer: “Er, no. Sorry to have bothered you.”

(He hung up and we haven’t been called since!)