But it sure is funny.

Have you ever had one of those off-the-wall experiences when you thought, "no one will ever believe this just happened?" Well, Monday was my day in bizarre-o-world.

At 5:30 on Monday afternoon, I stepped into an elevator in a friend's condominium, and the phone started to ring. Not my cell phone, but the emergency phone in the elevator.

That in itself was a bit odd. After all, when was the last time you heard an elevator phone ring? But that’s not the bizarre part.

The unbelievable part happened when I decided to answer the phone that wouldn’t stop ringing. I know that "curiosity killed the cat," but I wanted to know who in the world was calling an elevator.

So I reached down, opened the little door, and picked up the big brown elevator phone. I answered with an inquisitive and slightly tentative "hello." Turns out, it wasn’t a call telling me the building was on fire or that my car was being towed from the parking garage. No, after the brief but heightened anticipation, it turns out it was a solicitation for a credit card!

Has it really come to this? Cold-calling elevators to see if some desperate soul will succumb to yet one more credit card solicitation before reaching the ground floor?

When I told the person on the other end of the line that, "they had just called an elevator," there was dead silence. Imagine that -- I rendered a telemarketer speechless.

My favorite Twilight Zone Telemarketing experience occurred while working at the North County Times -- an outside telemarketing firm hired by the newspaper called my desk as I was working on the next day's paper and asked me if I wanted to subscribe to the North County Times. I told them it wouldn't be necessary.