lornamatic

I had no idea. You can hire computer programmers for $9 an hour in this town?

Someone’s Butler-placement service has the PR machine running. From the LATimes’ article (which is the third story on this topic I’ve seen this week) If the butler does it, you’ll pay:

“He could be making $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 a year at a mansion in Bel-Air with museum-quality furnishings rather than cooped up as a $9-an-hour computer programmer in a cubicle in Mid-Wilshire,” says Baker, who started his company in 2004 after a stint as a recruiter for a search firm.

So glad to know that those with a natural flair for food presentation and flower arranging need no longer suffer the pain of database administration.

Internet, you never cease to amaze me. Now you can shop for your very own hired help, right from the comfort of your own mansion! Although I suppose most people who can afford this have, well, hired help, to search for that sort of thing.

So recently we’ve been getting a spate of scam calls. I just took the third one in two weeks, and this time they hung up on me.

I think that’s an improvement.

The caller always has a heavy Indian-sounding accent. They want to let us know that we’ve paid our taxes on time, so we’re eligible to receive free grants. See, they’re calling from the Government of the USA.

So the first time it was kind of funny. We went around in circles for a long time, and I kept telling the guy I wasn’t interested. I finally raised the tone of my voice to kill, and he got the message.

“You are not interesting, then” he said.

“That’s right,” I said. “I am not interesting, at all.”

They’ve called twice more, and this time it was a very pushy lady who insisted she was calling from Virginia. Rather than harass her by telling her some story about being from Virginia too, and going on and on asking if she always shops at some imaginary made up store too, I just said, “Great -what’s your website?”

“I’m calling from the USA government.”

“OK, right - so what’s your web address there?”

“It’s for a grant, because you have paid your taxes.”

“Ah, yes, of course. So your homepage address, what is that?”

silence for a moment… “I’m with the government. You won a grant because you paid your taxes.”

“Right, that’s wonderful. So how can I see your website? it’s w,w,w, dot, what?”

“Double-you, double-you, double-you, dot, *mumble mumble mumble* dot, com”

“Ooh, I’m SORRY! I didn’t quite get that. Could you say just the middle part again?”

Super fast:“WWWDOTGRANTUSADOTCOM”

“Hmmmmm! www.grantusa.com is a distillery! They make liquour! Are you calling me from a distillery? Did I win some liquour?”

Emphatic: “I am calling from VIRGINIA!”

“There are distilleries in VIRGINIA?”

silence… CLICK

I am disappointed - she seemed like a nice lady, and we didn’t get to discuss Hendricks’ Gin or anything. I guess I’ll just have to wait until they call again. Maybe next time I’ll make her send me a friend request on Myspace.

Meanwhile, it should be obvious but, beware people calling you with free grant money. Here’s the story on Snopes.

Normally I’d say, beware people who show up uninvited at your front door and try to give you a medical exam, too, but it seems like that’s all the rage in some places. What could possibly go wrong with that one?