How many times a day does it happen?

The phone rings.

You turn off the TV just as Angela Lansbury is about to point to the murderer, and answer.

On the other end you hear nothing...like you’ve picked up a dead receiver. Usually it stays dead for a few seconds. Then someone comes on asking for the homeowner and the spiel is on.

If you haven’t figured out what that dead sound is yet allow me to break the good news.

That sound is an automated dialing device. The companies who run boiler room operations use these and attach employees to them with a headset. The computer dials your number automatically but no connection to one of their sales people goes through until you are snared on the line waiting for them to reel you in, just like a carp. Thus the delay.

And why do they use these devices? Because they don’t want to waste their employee’s time waiting for you to answer your phone! Can you say “chutzpah”?

They have arranged matters for themselves very nicely. First, they shatter the tranquility of your home by sounding an alarm. You march dutifully to the phone and, following convention as they know you will, you answer it. In so doing, you prove to them that a live human has presented himself for abuse where you wait before they deign to connect you to whichever of their representatives is free to talk to you. You become their unpaid receptionist! Don’t you feel special?

When I discovered this I became so furious that I swore I’d do something. I haven’t figured out what yet but boy is it gonna be swift and terrible. I'm hoping it will even qualify as medieval. I’m open to suggestions. (See E mail address below).

These are the kind of frustrations that define the past century and promise to engulf us in the next; the battle between man and machine. It is a war with no apparent armistice, only escalation.

There was a time when I felt it was polite to listen to what the caller had to say before saying no. Then I graduated to gently interrupting them, telling them I needed no time share condo in Acapulco, thanking them for the call and wishing them a good day.

Thanks to auto dialers I no longer feel compelled to be so polite.

If I’m in a hurry and they ask to speak to the homeowner I just say “nope” and hang up.

If I’m feeling coy I let them start their spiel and then gently hangup the phone in hopes they will keep talking for awhile before they realize I’m gone. This way I get back those seconds they stole from me with the auto dialer and save some other poor chump from a phone call, or at least delay it for a few seconds. Maybe HE can catch whodunnit from Angela.

To those who would suggest I’m denying an existence to those who choose to earn a wage in this manner I can only congratulate you on your keen powers of observation and say you are right. I do. I suggest these folks make their livings in ways less annoying to the rest of us. Maybe they could all take up the bagpipe and roam door to door giving midnight serenades?

And don’t get me started on what these “phantom” calls do to the elderly and infirm who often have trouble getting to the phone. I remember that by the time my own grandmother made her way to a ringing phone she would have convinced herself that someone in the family must be dead. The phone could ring in her house at two in the afternoon and her dither would begin. “Who could be calling at this hour?” She’d ask of no one in particular.

I find it difficult to believe in this day and age that the telephone is an effective merchandising tool anyhow. It seems to me there are so many other ways for marketers to extract money from people that the phone would not be cost effective. With consumers ordering from catalogs, shopping on 24 hour TV, visiting air conditioned mega malls and clicking their way into debt via online credit card purchases I wouldn’t think there would be much left by the time the telephone rang.

Most of the appliances in my house are trying to sell me things and I wish they’d stop. My television, my computer, my telephone; all conspire to get more money out of me. I start getting nervous now when the dishwasher hits the rinse cycle or the blender is switched to puree. I keep thinking a hologram of Obi-Wan Kenobi will be projected onto the countertop suggesting I need a three-room carpet shampoo for just $39.95.

Perhaps more technology is the answer. Maybe it is time for a phone chip. If computers can be arrayed against pornographic content for children then somebody ought to be able to protect me from the telebots...or is that too much to ask?

Never mind. I think I know the answer to that one.