I'm generally very nice to telemarketers, mostly because that's a rough job, and I feel bad for them. I hear them out, but then firmly and politely decline. Most of the time, it takes an extra 20 seconds out of my day, but I don't feel like a jerk.

The only time I've ever lost my temper on the phone was with a debt collector. She was from an Ohio company that was calling me about a debt they said I had incurred in Ohio and hadn't paid. At that point, I hadn't lived in Ohio for almost a decade. She asked me to give them my social security number to confirm my identity, which, of course, I refused to do. They refused to tell me what the debt was for unless I would provide my SS#. I insisted that I hadn't lived in Ohio in a long time and had no idea what the debt could be, and I was suspicious of fraud, so I wasn't going to give them my SS#. We went around and around for about 20 mins before I started swearing at her and threw the phone across the room. I can't think of any time in my life I've been angrier--the person on the other end was so painfully stupid and didn't see the apparent problem with what she was proposing.

UA5straightin2008 wrote: my dad pays our cellphone bill (lucky me) and somehow my number is the "account number" so i always get calls when a payment is past due. literally 3-4 times a day until it is paid. ...

Seems like a small price to pay for free service.

Why are you calling me, my daddy pays my bill?