Freelancer's Office: Blog

After sleeping in late with a toothache, I got a phone call just before noon.  It was some gal that could barely speak much less barely speak English.  She sounded like she was sitting across the room from a speaker phone and mumbling toward her feet.  I kept trying to ask her to speak up or take it off speaker phone or whatever, but she did not seem to understand what I was trying to explain about not being able to hear her.

I finally gave up on trying to point out the detail that I could not understand a word she was saying, and just had her repeat things until I understood it.  I was amazed she actually did it.  Turned out she wanted to have me take a survey and if I qualified for it then I could take the survey and be paid $15.  That’s kewl, so why not, I’m in advertising stuff online so I figured it might be pertaining to one of those companies I work for - although I would hope they all have better sense than to hire someone you can’t understand.

Well, she launches into her spiel about do I work for marketing or advertising (I explained I write online ads, but she did not seem to think that qualified, so ::shrug:: ) then she asked if I was involved in any health care profession - both of these took far longer for her to ask and entailed a dozen scenarios each, but bottom line was nope, no advertising companies or  health care places employ me - go on to
step two of the “do you qualify?”

This is one question after another about have I ever been diagnosed for such and such by a doctor. I finally head her off and explain, for the third time, that I have never seen a doctor, have never been diagnosed for any of what she’s asking, have not been sick enough to see a doctor since I was ten. (Okay, I saw one for tonsillitis at about twelve and one for a busted arm at 13 and had a checkup at 16 - but come on, the woman’s going on and on and I ain’t seen a doctor for any of that stuff.)

She started thanking me for my time and I asked if that meant I was disqualified because I had not seen a doctor for any of those things.  Yup.  Okay, so, I asked who she worked for.  Oh boy, if I thought she could not talk before… ::shakes head:: I finally get her to spit out “Health Related Studies” and just shake my head.  I try again, “Who do you work for? What company pays you?”  She is silent for a long time, then asks me if I can hold for a moment.  “Sure thing.”

Yeah, you guessed it.  She hung up the phone on me.  I still don’t know what to make of the call, but I assume that it was not a case of I had not been diagnosed with things as it was that I was not gullible enough to fall for her scam when she got to it so she needed to ditch me fast.  My best guess s far is either someone that was looking for somebody they could get bank information from or someone that they could sell health insurance to.