Sales call or prank call?
Ring, ring.
Me: Hello?
[long pause, during which I accidentally wait just a little bit too long to comfortably hang up]
Caller [sounding very vague, possibly drugged]: ...Hello...
[long pause]
Me: Yes, hello.
[long pause]
Caller [who continues to sound stoned throughout]: This is [name, which I didn't catch] from KGO Radio, is this Jed Hartman?
Me: Can you remove me from your calling list, please?
Caller: This is not a soliciting call, this is, um, a congratulations call. [pause] You've just ... um ... lost 810 dollars. [muffled:] Oh, no. [It's hard to describe the intonation on "Oh, no"—mildly bothered, but calm, perhaps as though she had just dropped her script and was leaning away from the phone to pick it up.]
Me: Can you remove me from your calling list, please?
[silence.]
Me: Hello?
[line goes dead.]
Now, it's possible that this was some teenager making a prank call. But the opening sequence (long pauses, inability to hear me when I answered the phone) sounded like telemarketing to me, as does the fact that *69 didn't work when I tried to call them back. And by her accent and intonation, I would guess that the caller was an African-American woman in her 20s (though I could well be wrong about any or all of that), which (though I realize I'm stereotyping here) isn't a demographic I associate with prank calls in the middle of the afternoon.
It's also possible it was a "call people up and give them a reward if they're listening to your station" call, but if so it was the most badly handled such call I've ever heard.
At any rate, I contacted KGO to complain about it, just in case it really was an official representative of theirs, but I don't expect to hear back from them.