What follows may appear a bit ‘ranty’, but having casually canvassed the opinion of other small business owners, it seems we are not alone in experiencing an ever increasing onslaught of unsolicited time wasting calls which are disrupting our working day.

Junk email is bad enough, what with regular scams involving billion dollar lottery wins and inheritances, offers of fake goods from far flung corners of the globe, PR people who can’t seem to string a coherent sentence together and all these infuriating SEO experts who promise to increase our website traffic by gazillion per cent. Most are are automatically redirected to the junk folder, and the delete button soon takes care of the rest, but answering the telephone to yet another pushy marketer (who may well deny the fact!) is a whole new level of irritant, especially when we are registered with the TPS.

Last week alone we had serial callers offering to get us compensation for the accident we never had and the policy we were never sold, a singularly determined extended warranty flogger (we recently bought a new appliance online and the company ignored our marketing opt-out request), a  telephone chugger, several silent and numerous automated calls and, last but not least, some dodgy bloke with breathing difficulties who wanted to discuss the ins and outs of vintage knickers! While we may sound breathless when we answer the frockery phone, that’s usually because we have had to run up two flights of stairs from the stock room to the office.

So regrettably, we are having to screen incoming calls to avoid the marketing mad men (and equally maddening women), which means callers will more than likely be greeted by an answering machine message even when human frockers are in the building. We apologise to genuine enquirers and customers for any inconvenience, but we feel sure it will free up more of our valuable time for providing a first class frocking service.