Kindness Insults My Intelligence

Don’t worry. All those messages aren’t you. My mom called once last night. (Photo credit: Dave Chamberlain)

Thank you for your kind telephone call. Because the ringing started promptly at 6:30, I did not have to listen to my annoying family members during dinner.

Thank you for kindly not hanging up on our machine. We use it to weed out the undesirable callers but you demonstrated your friendliness by persisting.

Thank you for kindly leaving a message after the beep. We appreciate you taking the time from your busy schedule to inform us that we may qualify for lower interest rates on our credit cards.

Thank you for kindly repeating your message multiple times even though no one is on the line with you. It brings back the nostalgia of a scratched vinyl record. It also reminds me of political campaigns, Miley Cyrus, and Justin Bieber.

Thank you for kindly using an automated message instead of a live human. Listening to a machine is less painful than hearing a man writhe in agony as he desperately seeks a lifeline.

Thank you for kindly calling back fifteen minutes later to make sure we received the original message. We had forgotten to check and we plan to forget again.

Thank you for kindly calling a third time so that we could finish our dinner with the same melodic ringing we started with.  You obviously understood that we were forgetting the second message as well.

And last, but certainly not least…

Thank you for kindly not suing us for picking up the phone and asking your robocaller if she dreams of performing [grown-up activity] with R2D2 and C3PO. Harassment is a serious matter and I trust that you would never stand for the mistreatment of any living or robotic entity.