The biggest asshole award goes to…

Telemarketers. Fucking TELEMARKETERS. I mean, fine…it's a job, someone's gotta do it, but if there's one job in the world that has absolutely no value to it, it has to be telemarketing. Except maybe for pastors, but that's another issue all together. The difference between the pastor and a telemarketer is that with telemarketers, they annoy everyone.

So here I am in the U.S. -- land of the fucking telemarketers, the idiots probably invented the concept. You know things are bad when they have to create a registry where you can register your phone number to stop telemarketers from calling you and of course, the most creative title they could up with was the Do Not Call Registry. Duh. I was highly skeptical and turning a lil' paranoid about giving out my information -- this being the land of stolen identities, even giving away your bra size could lead to a bad episode of "Single White Female" -- and the fact that the government has a collective list of private phone numbers is a little scary, but hell, nothing's more irritating than an asshole calling you at 8am on a Saturday morning trying to sell you a stupid timeshare plan in Timbuktu. The registration worked for a while, telemarketers actually stopped calling…however, if you read the fine print when you registered your number on the Do Not Call Registry, apparently, SOME people were allowed to invade your privacy -- any organization or company that you have been in contact with the past month (I think) could call you, the police, military and other big brother cronies.

When I first moved to the U.S., I was super polite, so whenever any telemarketer called, I found it very difficult to say no to them and I actually listened to the entire conversation and politely declined all offers, regardless of how good they sounded. And if you've noticed, everytime you say no, the deal always gets better for you, so if you're one of those suckers who decides to buy something from a telemarketer (what's wrong with you?), just keep saying no. For the record, I have NEVER succumb to any telemarketer, although to prove how sweet my lil' Zhuang is, poor guy actually bought an apparent cruise to the Bahamas for two people for $85. The cruise people later sent an information packet with a VHS to showcase the vacation. Now, the fact that it came in a VHS and DVD should have been a dead giveaway but nooo…as green as we were then, we actually watched the VHS and damn, the video was probably made in the early 80s coz everyone had big hair, really bad dress sense and were way to dressed up to be in the Bahamas. Everyone in the video is probably receiving Medicare by now.

You may ask, why my sudden angry barrage telemarketers? Here's why -- I'm NOT a morning person and will never be one and the last thing I want to deal with when I'm late for work and rushing out the door is a telemarketer. And even if I had time, it would be used wisely to chug down a cup of coffee and not pleasantly saying no to the idiot who's trying to convince you to switch from satellite to cable. So it's Friday morning, just 9 more hours before my week becomes stress-free, some idiot rings me up and has the audacity to ask for me by name and uses my name repeatedly throughout his fucking sales pitch. And guess what? Ooo…he was calling from the Sheriff's Office…which somehow in his stupid fucking mind that gave him some kind of authority over the regular assholes. And oh, on top of that, he started the fucking pitch by saying, "What I'm about to tell you will be very important to your community and this call might be recorded." So of course I let him continue, I mean, it could be something important like a police alert that a serial murderer was on the lose or something, right? Nope. Asshole was trying to get me to fucking donate money for more donuts or some drivers' education program. Hell, no! So I said, "I'm on my way out, this is not a good time," and guess what the idiot did? He said, "Oh, I understand, but with a simple donation of $10 you can help…" I was tempted to explain to him that I was a poor starving student who was in debt, but then I thought to myself, WHY? Why the hell am I taking time to explain my situation to a reckless idiot who decided to invade the privacy of my own home to pester me to do something that I refused to do? So, to hell with telemarketers -- cop or not -- I hung up. So here's my piece of advice to all you nice people out there, JUST HANG UP, telemarketers never call back, trust me. Or if you can't do it, get an answering machine. But trust me, hanging up on annoyance gives you a really satisfying feeling. And to all you jobless people out there, regardless of how desperate you get, working at Walmart has more of a redeeming value than getting a job as a telemarketer.