In honor of Election Day (U.S.), I thought I'd share the typical response I've been using whenever I receive a call from a pollster, robo-pollster, campaign, robo-campaign-ad, or GOTV drive. For most people, I suspect these calls are a minor inconvenience, and it's possible to deal with them in a civil manner.
Unfortunately, I'm registered as an independent. And I'm in a swing state, which always has close elections. And it's a very small state, so there aren't that many voters to actually call. Bottom line, there are about a hundred different groups who are inordinately interested in my opinion.
I've been getting three to four calls every freaking night for the last two months. I'm well past 'minor inconvenience' and deep into 'fuck every last one of them' territory.
(Oh, we have the first presidential primary in the nation, as well. That's an additional nine month campaign season every four years. That campaign will be jammed in my face from Spring '15 to Winter '16.)
So, here's a sample of how I've handled these calls lately:
<<Ring-Ring>>
Groan. Drop whatever I'm doing to answer the phone.
"Hello?"
Dead silence.
Sigh.
"Hello?"
More silence.
Wait 3 to 5 seconds while I wait for the organization which called me to actually begin the call.
Faint click, background noise.
"Hello?"
'Oh, Hello [voter name] I'm calling ...'
"Stop."
'... to conduct a quick 10 question survey ...'
"Stop. Stop talking, stop reading your script, and listen. We're working off of my script now."
Awkward pause. 'Ok.'
"Thank you. Now, I'd like your name, and the name of your organization, please."
'I'm Clarence, with Redundant Research Group.'
"Thank you, Clarence. You should know, if I'm disconnected when I make my next request, I will take the time to call Redundant Research Group and tell them about it. Now, would you please connect me with your supervisor?"
Short to intermediate wait.
'Hello, this is Thomas. How can I help you?'
(Optional dialogue, depending on my mood: "I should let you know off the bat that this complaint is a reflection on your organization, not Clarence -- he's only doing his job, and he was perfectly polite.")
"However, there are two issues I wish to bring to your attention. First of all, when you call someone, there is a delay of several seconds after they pick up the phone before your auto-dialer connects them to anyone. It is incredibly rude to interrupt someone's day, only to greet them with dead air."
'Oh, I'm terribly sorry, that should not happen, we'll look right into that.'
"Secondly, I'd like to give you a preview of all future calls to this number: I will never, ever, provide you with a data point, or change my vote because of a phone call, or decide to go to the polls just because you called me. I vote in every election, but I refuse to encourage a culture of democracy-by-pestering."
"There is one thing I will do, every time Redundant Research Group calls. I will get my call transferred to the highest ranking person I can find, and I will waste as much of that person's time as possible."
"If I receive three or more calls from Redundant Research Group, I will make it a point to call your office, every night, for the next two months, and -- say it with me -- I will waste the time of the highest ranking person I can find."
"And every night over those two months, I'll let them know that you could have prevented it, just by losing my number. Good bye."
I've been doing this the last couple weeks, and I've noticed the number of calls has started to taper off.
Oh well, off to vote. Voting is the price we pay for the right to complain.
I realized it's been a while since I used this blog ... thingy, so I thought I'd take a minute to mention what's happening on my end.
I'm still writing, quite a bit, actually. But it's spread across several fronts, so I'm not sure when I'll have something new ready to publish.
The next Pribbs and Pogs adventure is coming along, and will hopefully be ready within a month or so. Tentative title is 'I, Ho-bot'. No, it's not a sexbot story. Yes, I'm sure that someone, somewhere, has written a story with that title. It's a safe bet that my story came out different. A very safe bet. Beyond that, I'd like to write 2-4 more stories involving that gang. I may end up formally grouping those shorts together in a series.
My main project (the one that got me kicked off on this weird-ass hobby) is a long, multi-chapter Swarm story titled 'Donaghue's Choice'. Yeah, I know, the name is usually spelled Donahue. But if I used that spelling, that would make me Bad Line Houl. Doesn't have the same ring to it.
Anyway, that one's rumbling along, moving into it's 13th chapter, a little over 200 pages last time I counted. That's roughly the half-way point, and the last pieces of the later plot have snapped into focus. There's still lots of connective tissue to write, however, so it'll be into 2015 before I even finish the first draft. I don't plan to post any of it publicly until it's finished.
I've started to mess around with another long story outside of sci-fi. I'm not going to do any serious writing on it until I finish Donaghue, but I can feel it tugging at my muse periodically.
There are also two other one-off sci-fi shorts that I'm aggressively poking at. One is a first-contact story, the other has a religious theme. Either one may burst out on short notice ... or they both may wither away before escaping my skull. Too soon to tell.
So, for the tl;dr crowd: The enthusiasm to write is still there, but it's not as narrowly focused as I'd like. You'll see more from me down the road. (It may be crap, but you'll see it.)
I know I said that another Pribbs story was next in the pipeline, but I came up with a non-Swarm quicky, which overtook it in the queue. It should post later today.
(The other work-in-progress stories I mentioned earlier are still on track.)
Thanks to everyone who wrote in to say they enjoyed 'Oysters, Half-baked'. For those who have been asking, yes, there will be more stories with these two -- but it might be a few months.
Pribbs and Pogs are my side project, while I work on my much, much longer Swarm Cycle story. When I need to take a break from the big monstrosity, I switch to the short stories for a while. Since I'm working on it piecemeal, it'll probably be a few months before the next short is ready.
Next in the chute is a Pribbs-only prequel/origin story, which is about half way through a first draft now. After that, at least one more mission for Pribbs and Pogs, probably two or three others. There's a good chance there'll be a Melman-centric story, as well.
Thanks for all the feedback, everyone. I am very new to this, and I'm glad people seem to be enjoying my little fever dream.