For months on end, our phone rang every day at exactly 7:40 a.m. I’m almost always awake then, but the caller ID would say "Unknown" and I think that’s way too early for someone to call, so I ignored the calls every day.
Finally, last Saturday morning I’d had enough. I was tired and cranky from traveling, so when the phone rang at the usual time, I picked it up and snarled, "This is way too early to be calling on a weekend!" Then I hung up. Yeah, I know, I get that way sometimes.
So, yesterday I was flipping through our mail when I came upon an envelope from an unfamiliar company, addressed to me. I opened it to find a letter from a market research company. They apologized for bothering me recently and enclosed a dollar.
For a millisecond, I felt a little guilty for my crabby outburst because it was definitely the right kind of gesture for a company to make when they’ve done something to irritate a consumer. However, it doesn’t excuse incessant weekend calling at the butt-crack of dawn.
As I was relating the story to my husband we both realized, "Wait a second – we’re not getting those early morning calls anymore either!"
Not having to sprint to the phone in the middle of getting ready for work each morning is way more valuable to me than a dollar. If I’d known that the Greta Garbo approach to auto-dialers was so effective, I’d have tried it a long time ago.
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