I used to love to toy with telemarketers, shouting in a fake Eastern Euro accent and acting like I couldn't understand them. But then I started meeting people who couldn't get any job but telemarketing, and it's just such a lousy situation that I couldn't be rotten to them any more. A lot of the time the working conditions are ridiculous, with supervisors standing over them with stopwatches and only one bathroom break a day allowed.

Now I just say "I never respond positively to telemarketers because it's not a practice I want to encourage," or if it's one of those fake charities, "I never make contributions over the phone," and hang up without wasting any more of their (or my) time. These days most of them have such thick Spanish or Indian accents and such awful connections that I can't understand them anyway.