I got a phone call from my bank while I was eating my dinner. The woman said hello and asked me if I'm who I am. I said yes. I thought maybe she was going to tell me something important about my account, so I didn't hang up. Then she said something like this:

"You may be interested in the blah blah money blah blah insurance blah blah important blah blah winnie the pooh blah blah David Hasselhoff blah blah you gotta get this or someone will steal all yer stuff and kill you and then shave your cat."

That took her like 90 seconds to say. I didn't even have to say "Mm Hmm". She just talked. At the end of her cat-shaving speech, she said she just needed to confirm my name and address to sign me up. I said Ok. So she reads off my full name and spells it out. I told her she spelled it completely wrong. She asked me what was wrong. I said all of it. She asked me to spell out my first name:

• b ...
• a ...
• l ...
• l ...
• s.

I corrected her like three times, until she finally got it right. And she was having problems with some crazy menu's in her software, because it was taking her a really long time to finally get it typed in right. I was pulling out arm hair to keep from cracking up. Then she asked if my last name was Ok. I said no. I spelled my last name:

• h...
• a (voice cracking)

I couldn't speak anymore without foaming at the haha's. She read it back as 'h', 'a', and then I hung up.

The last time they called, I told them to take me off their calling list. You gotta wonder whether this kind of treatment will be more effective.