One summer when I was in college in the late 1970s, I tried door-to-door sales.
I was not successful — I once fell off a porch and into a flower bed. But I learned a valuable lesson: Most people are annoyed by strangers at their door.
And that was back in an era when doorbells still got lots of jabs from friends dropping by unannounced. The thought of knocking on a hundred doors a day in today's hair-trigger world feels cringy.
I feel like texting and mobile phone calls are the new front porches. What used to be clear channels for communication are now rivers of spam, and America is getting fed up.
A few years ago, I interviewed a cancer patient at her home in Ooltewah. Her landline rang five times during our one-hour chat, and she never lifted a finger to answer.
"Robocalls," she huffed.
(READ MORE: Getting a lot of unwanted phone calls? Here are ways to stop them)
For the last couple of months, my cellphone has been blowing up with robocalls. Most are camouflaged with the 423 area code and appear to be originating from local addresses such as Soddy-Daisy or Tiftonia.
I answer and there's a three-second pause before an automated voice — which sounds strangely conversational — starts making a soft pitch for Medicare enhancements that I "might be missing." I tried talking to the voice a couple of times before realizing she had no ears — the solicitors are always female voices.
As someone who spent much of the last year trying to educate myself on the nuances of Medicare, it appears these are pitches for Medicare Advantage plans. Since this is the general enrollment period, Jan. 1-March 31, I'm hoping the calls will fall off at the end of the month.
I enrolled in the national Do Not Call registry, which helped some. But I still get one or two of these spam calls a day on my mobile phone, down from four or five at the peak. (There are reports that some robocalls are from scammers trying to get your personal info, such as your Medicare or Social Security numbers. So, be careful, fellow seniors.)
I've always been a sucker for answering unidentified phone calls. With young-adult children, you just never know when the strange number that pops up on your phone might be an emergency worker trying to contact you about one of your children. Or at least that's what my anxious mind tells me.
Unwanted messages have started seeping into my texts, too. Sometimes it's an unidentified PDF file that simply says: "Please Open This."
Nope. That's not happening.
Texts are another problem. Every doctor, pharmacy and hospital in my universe of health-care needs seems to enjoy sending me texts.
The worst offender is my pharmacy, which not only sends me a reminder that one of my prescriptions is ready to pick up, but scolds me if it takes me a couple of days to get there.
"Your (fill in the blank) RX is ready for pickup. This is your second reminder," the text will say.
Whoa, that "second reminder" part is getting pretty close to an insult. The text seems to imply that the pharmacy is getting tired of telling me to pick up my meds. I understand this is automated, but some human decided that this scolding language was a good idea.
The problem here for me is twofold — Scots and Irish.
(READ MORE: Scots-Irish roots run deep in the South)
It doesn't take much of an "insult" to give me a red face and a sharp tongue. Even though the "second reminder" phrase is just a mild rebuke, it is enough for me to rethink the thousands of dollars I've spent at this particular pharmacy chain over the years.
The other annoyance is companies I have done business with sending texts asking for good online reviews. I understand the impulse, but it's just another way of clogging my text feed. Fishing for compliments used to be considered rude.
And don't get me started on politicians invading our texts.
Remember when junk mail was a thing?
Well, the junk has migrated to our mobile phones, and a public backlash is afoot.
Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645.