Telemarketers Think I’m Chinese

As you may or may not know, the Federal Government recently set up a no call list so telemarketers won’t bother you.

You know what I wish they had? Some kind of “not Chinese” registry or something. Everyone always thinks I’m Chinese. The worst was sophomore year, when the Korean American Student Association would call for my Chinese roommate and not me. Not that I wanted anything to do with them. It was just the principle of the thing.

So anyway, we’ve been getting more calls from Chinese telemarketers recently. They just jabber away in Chinese. One woman called and started talking and I was like, “Uh… wo shi han guo ren… I’m not Chinese…” while she was talking and then she goes “blah blah blah… what? <click>”. Pretty rude.

The funniest thing that happened was with Jieun a couple weeks ago. It was on a Friday night during small group, and a telemarketer calls, jabbering Chinese. Thing is, Jieun thought it was Stephen (who was late) maybe testing her (she’s taking Mandarin this summer). So she responds like

“Wait wait wait! I can get this… hmmm… I know <something> is ‘today’… WHAT DOES IT MEAN???? Argh, OK, I give up. What is it?”

And the guy responds in English, “Uh, this is AT&T.. can I speak with Danny Chai?” Oops. But whatever, we need to get on a not Chinese list.