Whathef....?

I saw something today that I still find very hard to believe.

The phone rang over at the Grade 9 section of the junior high staff room.  One of the teachers over there answered it and then announced that there was a call for one of three named science teachers.  The nearest one took the call.

Less than a minute later, the teacher (politely) blew his stack and started (politely) chewing out whoever it was on the phone.

It turned out that it had been a call from a recently-graduated student . . . who had then proceeded to give the teacher a telemarketing sales pitch for retirement condominiums!

I really hate telemarketers.  (grating diminished 7th chord)  While I understand that a job is a job, the fact that they earn their money by barging uninvited into people's lives and harassing them puts them right down there in the abyss with cockroaches, ticks, and paparazzi as far as I'm concerned.  It's bad enough that they get their hands on public school staff directories and proceed to bully the teachers.  My wife, a public school teacher, frequently gets calls from very stubborn and persistent telefarkheads, usually from the same two companies, both of which deal in (coincidentally) retirement condominiums.  They take advantage of her politeness by badgering her.  She says, "I'm sorry, but I'm not really interested," and they just keep calling back again and again . . . sometimes even late at night or early in the morning.  I finally grab the phone from her and frothily practice my rudest and most obscene Japanese on the arsehoal on the other end, and a few months later yet another salesprick from the same company starts calling asking for her again.  Over the past four years I think I've already told more than half a dozen youngish-sounding drips from one company to yank their heads out of their aft-shafts and get a life, and just a few weeks ago we got ANOTHER one from the SAME OUTFIT . . . followed a few days later by someone from RCCfH(Retirement Condo Company from Hell)#2!!! This is yet another example of a Saga That Just Won't End Even Though It Ought To.

As far as I'm concerned this qualifies as harassment, disruption of livelihood, disturbing the peace, and mental anguish, all of which are grounds for a lawsuit.  However, the always-company-sided Tokyo High Court has already set a legal precedent saying telemarketers are exercising a "legitimate business right".  That's one of the main reasons why Ye Olde Academy, a private school, decided some years ago not to make the staff directory available anymore.  It's bloody inconvenient, but it has saved us from most of what my poor wife and her colleagues have had to suffer.

. . . only now they're calling us at work . . . during class hours to boot . . . using our own alumni to harass us.  

WHATHEF.....!?!?!??!?!???!?!???????