Press Release.

A telemarketer is suing area man Dan Constable for causing him unneeded trauma and hearing loss. The telemarketer, who has chosen to remain anonymous, told sources he was calling Constable around dinner time, apparently reviewing the company’s prescribed script, in addition to the information on file regarding Constable, while the phone number was already dialed and ringing. “I had to figure out who I was talking to,” the telemarketer defended himself, describing his experience as “an ordeal that still causes me to wake up most nights in a cold sweat.” Constable, who was having dinner at the time of the telemarketer’s call, answered the phone to “silence.” But Constable’s impatience, the telemarketer argued, was just “too rapidly agitated,” adding: “it was like he went from a 1 in terms of annoyance straight to a 10!”

“Hello?” Constable was reported as saying as he answered the phone to some 10 seconds of silence. “Hello?!?!?!” he almost immediately yelled back, startling the telemarketer on the other end to drop his hot coffee down his lap. After the telemarketer gained the courage to offer a reply–“Hello, is this Daniel Constable? I’m calling on the behalf of Sloan Creditors–would you be willing to spare a few minutes this evening to find out how you can lower your annual percentage rate?”–he was reportedly cut off in mid-sentence by an enraged Constable: “Listen, you don’t call here ever again or I’ll personally come over there and strangle you with your telephone cord!”

While the telemarketer is suing Constable for causing him much unneeded stress, trauma, and hearing loss, Constable is filing a counter-suit, claiming the telemarketer’s call, and the annoyance it induced, caused him severe stress and anxiety, and compromised his overall health, as the call kept him from his dinner for an entire 30 seconds before he had the good sense to hang up the phone in a rage, slamming it several times on the receiver while invoking every known blasphemy. The rage that the telemarketer brought upon him, Constable argued, also caused his family much fear, stating that he expects the telemarketer to pay for the familial problems his “imprudent call induced.”