Yesterday I got a call from an “unknown number.” Normally I wouldn’t answer those, but as my wife has a relative in prison, whose calls always show as “unknown,” and as my best friend had a death in his family last week and people are coming into town for the funeral which will be held right next to our house, I feel like I should answer calls even if I can’t screen them.
The caller had a lilting foreign accent, but seemed to be soliciting my wife’s attendance for a “free hear scan, absolutely no charge, at [local hospital].”
Weird, huh? I said no thanks and hung up.
Today I get another such call. Again, unknown caller. Again, same lilting female accent, asking for me specifically this time. Again, the unsolicited offer of “free heart scans.”
What’s a “heart scan,” anyway, I wonder? I’ve never heard the term. Are they talking about screening? EKGs? Some kind of MRI or X-Ray? Are they proposing to irradiate my chest so they can sell me something?
What’s going on here? Are medical services suddenly feeling the economic pinch and cold-calling people for cardiac MRIs or something?
Maybe I haven’t heard it right, I think; she’s rushing on in her script…"limited time offer, no obligation, heart disease is the number one killer, blah, blah, blah. So, I ask: “Did you say ‘heart scan’?”
“Just listen,” she snaps, cutting me off, and returns rigidly to reading her script.
I don’t need unsolicited medical vendors calling my house, masking their identity so I’ll be tricked into picking up the phone, and I for damned sure don’t need them getting snotty with me while trying to coax me into giving them time and money.
It’s bad for my heart, ya know?
So I hung up on her.