Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for November 16, 2014

Rat with a tuba: the next best thing to a jerk-seeking missile.

From California to somewhere in the East Coast. What a journey!

Too bad no real telemarketer would ever tell you his/her full name.

His car is pretty much covering Kentucky on that map.

Rat is just taking a page from the Muppets and Traveling by map! You make it to your destination in no time!

Telemarketers are annoying, yes. But yell at the companies that hire them, not the employees. I worked as a telemarketer for 3 months while in college, paying off tuition. I hated it. But I needed the cash. Yelling at the marketers is like yelling at the employees at a store for changes in company policy. The employees have absolutely no say, would surely rather be doing something else, and are taking the abuse while the people in charge and who can actually do something about it are enjoying no public abuse.If it’s between not paying the rent or working for an annoying company…

Political and charitable robocall managers are a totally different level of annoying, of course politicians won’t do anything about them.

GO RAT!!!! Only 39,763,334 more to go.

Rat’s a hero in today’s strip!

cool_alien_empire has a point, but since it is impossible to talk to the owners, people shout at the caller.Scam callers are a whole different level of obnoxious. I have no qualms whatsoever about abusing them. I have asked “toner-phoners” at work how they can look at themselves in the mirror in the morning. Have also told them I would have more self-respect if I was on welfare than if I was doing what they do. You DO have the choice not to work for crooks. If you choose to take that gig, you have no right to expect anything other than abuse.Is Rat suddenly turning into a good guy??!!!

A bit time-consuming and probably expensive (food, fuel, overnight motel stop or two, plus tuba) but definitely worthwhile! Go, Rat!

Here is another way to deal with telemarketers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAb8vGSRBoE

I tell them, “I’m going to save you some time. So you can get to your next call. I’m really not interested and put me on the ‘Do Not Call’ list.”.Some are nice and end the call, some get rude..One got so rude, and really ticked me off, I called *69 and asked for a manager to let them know what happened..Probably nothing, but I hope someone got chewed out.

Subjecting him to a tuba blast over the phone would have been easier and perhaps just as effective. I had a coworker who used to subject telemarketers to a blast with air horn every time they called. I’m sure they thought twice about calling him again.

I just set the phone on the floor and let them gab, the Rug likes the company…

The first sousaphone was developed by James Welsh Pepper in 1893…..He had somehow foreseen our modern misery

That’s cool Kaputnik, and rude telemarketers are the worst. Yet, you don’t realize how much you can make. I chose to do that demeaning job for 3 months to pay my tuition, then went back to my reg job in retail at a Barnes & Noble. But that quick telemarketing stint saved me from huge student loans to pay off. I made in 3 months what would have taken me nearly three times as long working at Burger King…and yes, I checked.

Wait… Rat still uses the YELLOW PAGES?

Rat certainly went out of his way to avoid Utah, Colorado, Kansas and Missouri. There must be outstanding warrants for him in those states.

@cool_alien_empire: That’s the thing, it’s easiest to just shout at us, rather than shouting at the owner, after all, they are the one who are listening to our voice and their frustration could only be directed at us.

What I like is a call from a third party using someone else’s phone number. I’ve even gotten couple from me!

John, John, John….it’s a comic strip. Comprendo?

About 5 years after we dropped the land line in favor of cellphones, my wife got a landline so a medical device could report back to the doctor’s office. We never told anyone the number. Within 36 hours we got a call about ADT Security installations, on an old phone that had never been unplugged. It was followed by a dozen other marketing calls in the next month. I finally unplugged the phone.In the 26 months since I learned how to enter junk numbers in my cell phone and just hear a beep, I have entered 183 numbers. The first one called back a couple months ago. They never give up. I never answer an out-of-state area code anymore. I might return a call if it doesn’t Google as a junk call.

Californians Against Telephone Solicitationwww.stopjunkcalls.com/When they don’t make any profit, the calls will stop. … See our junk fax page. … Stealth Telemarketing – You may have been telemarked and not even known it!

How to Stop Unwanted Phone Calls: 9 Steps (with Pictures)www.wikihow.com › … › Handling Difficult Phone CallswikiHowHow to Stop Unwanted Phone Calls. One of life’s great annoyances is getting an unwanted phone call at 8:00 on a Sunday morning or right when you sit down …

I stopped answering my home phone long ago, I turned off the ringer (unless I am expecting a particular call) and if someone has something important to tell me, they can leave a goddamn message. But when I did answer the phone, what I really hated was when I would pick up and say “Hello” and there was a delay of several seconds or more before someone answered. This meant that the telemarketer was calling multiple at the same time and just picked up the one that answered first. There oughta be a law!

Telemarketers will never stop as long as the phone companies make money from them. Maybe if these phone companies didn’t have monopolies and instead have some completion it would be a different situation.

I sense Rat is onto something…

I don’t actually mind the telemarketers who call in person. I can tell them to remove me from their calling list and have never been called by the same one twice..The ones that get under my skin are the robo-calls. Even if they do tell you that you can press a number to be removed from their calling list, they don’t honor it… and they put that number at the very end of their spiel so you have to listen to the whole thing first..I have gotten to the point where I start to stress out whenever I pick up the phone and it is a prerecorded message. Which sucks because there are times when I get a legitimate call that starts out with a prerecorded message.

Rat’s map is inaccurate. Shouldn’t he be driving to somewhere offshore?.Re: charities and political calls – I always tell those callers – I only give to or vote for those who don’t call me on the phone.

Personally, I would acquaint the telemarketer to the sound of The Sweet’s Ballroom Blitz at full blast, but hey, that’s just me.

I never answer the phone unless it’s from someone know. Caller ID and voicemail are my friends.

He kinda looks like Conan O’Brien.

Good old Acme! I guess there wasn’t enough cash flow from selling gadgets to aspiring coyotes.

My brother who is a shut-in LOVES telemarketers. He will spend as much time as they want talking to them and then tell how much he enjoyed the conversation – if they haven’t hung up already – and hang up on them. I listened to him one day talk to a person for about 20 minutes asking him all kinds of question about what the telemarketer was calling about and then he said, “well I guess not” and hung up. I asked him why in the world he did that and his reply was “I give them someone to talk to and they give me entertainment for awhile and then I never hear back from them” – of course he isn’t able to get out much and the way he does it, does make it entertainment for him.

Bob’s hair in panel 9 reminds me of this guy from the Little Rascals. The International Silver String Submarine Band

I got tired of telemarketers offering this or that unbelievable offer for long-distance services, so I told the latest “sorry, we don’t have a phone.” A few minutes later we get another call that came with a rather wet-sounding bit-o-flatulence.But they stopped calling.

Rat must own an unnaturally fast car if he can cross the country overnight.

I have been called by people from the same company many times, often the same one, despite telling them every time not to try to sell me a mortgage at a higher rate than my current one. Finally I got all sweetness and light on the next time and they thought they’d finally reeled me in. I told them, you called me at this time on this date and (flipping through the calendar) this time on this date and this time on this date—do you get the message, sir—and each time you have been told to take me off your list. The Federal fine is this much for each time after being told that, and if you ever call me again you will pay for X many times where I have recorded the date and time as per Federal rules for reporting. They never called again.

It’s better to get to the CEO or something because driving to a single phone agent’s house won’t stop the calls. Besides, at least he’s working a legal job! People tend to forget that telemarketers hate their jobs as much as you, but in some cases it’s the only thing they can find to pay bills. We hate people getting on welfare so when someone finds a job so they can pay their own way through life, we hate them just as much. ;)

Yes, I was a telemarketer for a year when I was 18 yrs old. I needed to pay my bills.

Moral: Never give personal information to strangers.

When Stephan Pastis uses a full name in the strip, he tries to make the last name as strange as possible, thus reducing the odds that there is someone with that name out there. I wonder if there’s truly a Bob Higginbottom out there.