Hi, Elizabeth, I Am Looking at Your Website . . .

The caller starts out: “Hi, Elizabeth, I am looking at your website,” to which my immediate response lately has been to cut them off at the pass:“Well, get the hell off of it and don’t come back.” You might think whoa, what if that caller was a potential client, but I assure you it is not. It’s a telemarketer who heard Sacramento real estate agents have deep pockets and, trust me, she wasn’t looking at my website, she was staring at a computer screen with thousands of telephone numbers of Sacramento real estate agents.

Because for every phone call like this that I answer, there are also dozens of home buyers calling every day searching homes for sale in Sacramento, and they want to make an appointment to go look at homes or they want to talk about putting their home on the market. Talking to a telemarketer eats up precious moments in my life. I could be talking to a client instead and should be. I’m one of those agents who really doesn’t mind talking on the phone. Here’s a bit of a secret: sometimes, I even call other agents and speak directly to them instead of sending a text or email, imagine that!

Heck, I grew up with a party-line in my house, and I’m not talking about dancing about with lampshades on our heads. This was a 1950’s thing in which more than one household shared the same telephone line. Each had a special ring so you could tell if the call was for you, but you could also just pick up the receiver and listen to your neighbor’s scintillating phone conversation, like, I’m gonna be home late, honey, so put the tuna casserole in the ‘frig. I’m so happy now to have my very own cellphone in 2014 that drops calls left and right.

It’s kinda creepy to get these sort of telemarketing calls, though. What’s next?

“Hi, Elizabeth, I’m standing in your bathroom wearing your panties.”

“Hi, Elizabeth, I’m in your bedroom petting your cat.”

“Hi, Elizabeth, I’m in your kitchen drinking your bourbon.”

Well, that last one will get me home in a jiffy.

I had just listed another home in Elk Grove yesterday, one of those emergency listings that pop up sometimes out of nowhere and require immediate attention. It was really hot by 10:30, and I had arrived at the home in Elk Grove around 9 AM to shoot photos and complete my visual inspection. At first I tried to remove the old listing sign post from the yard, but at my age, I’m likely to throw out my back so I gave up on it. Been there and done that.

Driving down I-5 on my way back to my home office, what do I get but another telemarketer trying to sell me SEO services. I’ve been doing my own SEO for a decade already, just by writing articles that are important to buyers and sellers. You can read some of those on homebuying.about.com. But I also write blogs and contribute in community forums, and it’s kinda hard to go anywhere online and not find this top producer Sacramento real estate agent and her listings.

I’m probably turning into Andy Rooney in my old age. Except he was a bit nicer about his crankiness, I suspect, whereas I tend to really lay it out there. I make other people laugh, too, by it. When I told the caller I was on her Do Not Call list, she said they don’t have that kind of list where she works. Hello? Do you work in America? I suspect the federal government would like to know about this company.

And I’m sorry that these people have to work as a telemarketer. I guess it beats hanging out on the street corner and panhandling or working at McDonald’s, which is the threat I hear that some of these private colleges make to potential suckers, er, students. I get they are just trying to make a living. Maybe they should go into real estate? This is where all of the misfits go.