UNSUBSCRIBE

“We’ll only email you once a week,” she said as she stuffed yarn into my bag. “It’s just special offers and coupons and that kind of thing. I shrugged. I might like the occasional coupon to use when I needed something.


That was October.


If you get a call from a telemarketer, it’s best to interrupt them politely as soon as possible and ask to be taken off of the list. It can take up to two weeks for your number to be removed, and a different company might still have your number, so you might have to ask different people several times before you stop getting calls. If you hang up on them, swear or shout at them and then hang up, all that does is puts your number at the bottom of the call list for someone else to call you again. If the list is short enough, you might even get another call the same night.


I know. I worked as a “teletubby” for two weeks. It was not a good time. The only good call I had was a guy that was more interested in flirting with me than in signing up for the credit card I was reluctantly selling.


Email is different. Even if you’ve got the box next to “email me once a week” or “email me once a month” checked on the website, once the holidays roll around, they forget about those boxes and email you every single day.


The only thing to do at that point is to head back to those boxes and hope they stick to their word when you click “UNSUBSCRIBE.”

Some would say that a call while you’re eating dinner is much more invasive than a gigantically full email inbox, but I would disagree.