Landline: Keep it or Get Rid of it????

It's summer, which means I, Pamela Tracy, am home during the day.  That is when I'm not carting my son to dive team, rollerskating with friends, public swim, or one of the million of things to occupy a mom during summer. Have I mentioned I have contracts for five books.  Yup, lots of writing.

Today, son is rollerskating and I'm home doing my to-do list.  And, writing.

So far, the home phone has run twice
1)  My credit card company - computer voice - no problem with account but they have an important message for me about refinancing.  Easy to hang up on robot voice.
2)  Autoglass company - real person - who I told "No, my windshields are fine."  After I said that, I added, "Just like I told you last week when you called."

Yesterday, I fielded five calls.  Two were computer voices; three were dead air.

I've started to rethink being nice.  See, I've worked on phones.  In college, I worked for MiCor, loved the job.  It was a perfect summer job.  I answered when someone called the 800 number.  "Quality Inns, what city and state can I help you with?"

My birth mother worked customer service for a phone company.  She often bemoaned how rude people could be.  "How hard is it to be nice?"

So, here's the truth.  I rethought being nice, and now I'm annoyed.

Now that I'm home days, and I'm answering my home line, I'm realizing that the landline is not for friends and family, it's for sales people.  And, my nice has segued to annoyed and is escalating to irritated.

An irritated author really does black moment well.  But, hey, I write romance.  Instead of sales calls, I need a Brad Pitt or Bobby Sherman kind of call.

One of the cable choices - not saying which one -  put me on their call list.  They called almost every day.  I'm not kidding.  I said no nicely a hundred times; I hung up a thousand times; I asked nicely that they stop calling at least ten times.  Once, my family went out of town for four days.  When I came home, my landline had nine messages from them (not really, but call waiting identified how many times they'd called.)

The next time they called, I asked for a manager and told him about the - nicely said no, hanging up, stop calling me - scenario.  Then, I mentioned the nine missed calls, over a four day period, I had on my phone.  I also said the words "Harassment and Lawyer."

I'm finally on the do-not call list for them.

My next goal is to get on the do not call list for auto-glass, solar panels, refinancing, home security systems, and insurance.

I've still got a nine year old at home.  I want to keep the landline because of him.

Am I the only one who no longer gets excited when the phone rings?

Pamela's book, Holiday Homecoming is a November 2014 release from Harlequin Heartwarming (no phones were harmed during the writing of this book)