Gotcha!

Check it out. This telemarketer called and...

ME: The SETI Institute, this is Brian.

Telemarketer: Hello Brian how are you doing?

ME: What's up?!

Telemarketer: How are you today?

ME: Fine, how can I help you?

Telemarketer: That's great, Shannon Atkinson please. (This is phrased as a command)

ME: Uh, who are you?

Telemarketer: I'm Kelly.

ME: Kelly what is your call in regards to?

Telemarketer: I'm calling about a financial matter for Shannon Atkinson.

ME: She's not in. Is there something I can help you with?

Telemarketer: Are you the person in charge of the financial decisions at your company, or do you handle sales?

ME: Sure.

Telemarketer: Well I can save you lots of money and increase your sales by 50%! How does that sound?

ME: Great. But, I'm not interested right now, can you please take us off your call list.

Telemarketer: You don't want to increase your sales for your company?

ME: Look, we don't have anything to sell. We are science and research company and a non profit.

Telemarketer: You are? How do you make money.

ME: That's none of you business!

Telemarketer: I represent a company that can advertise on your website, do have a website?

ME: Yes. But we receive donations for funding.

Telemarketer: Would you like more exposure so you could get more donations.

ME: No!

Telemarketer: No? Why wouldn't you want more donations.

ME: We don't want the exposure, we like to stay partially hidden due to our type of work.

Telemarketer: I don't understand.

ME: Uh, hello? Don't you know who you just called?

Telemarketer: (nothing)

ME: SETI stands for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. You can imagine the types of calls and emails we would get.

Telemarketer: Really? That's what it stand for? That is so cool! What do you do there? My mother had an experience a long time ago.

ME: Well we don't study UFOs or anything like that. We scan the skies for radio waves from space. It's a radio astronomy project.

Telemarketer: No way!

ME: Oh yeah, we have a bunch of information on our website.

Telemarketer: What is it?

ME: www.seti.org.

Telemarketer: (Sounds of her typing.) Your website is nice! That is so cool. It says you study the origins of life too?

ME: Yes. We study lots of things and what we hope to discover is how life came to be here on Earth. We study all planetary sciences and astrobiolgy, including our SETI research. SETI is a field of research studied by about 30 independent groups world wide. The SETI Institute is the largest group with about 12 scientist working on SETI more or less fulltime.

Telemarketer: I love astronomy. This is awesome, now I'm glad I called.

ME: Well if you want to be a part of the search you can go to our web page and check out TeamSETI. For 50 dollars you become a member of our institute with exclusive material on our website and you will receive our quarterly magazine the SETI Explorer.

That's right, I turned around and sold right back to the telemarketer. Justice is sweet!