Killer Savings
by Tim Carvell

LATE ONE NIGHT, as a teenage girl is babysitting, the phone rings. She picks it up, and a voice on the other end says, "I'm coming to kill you." She freaks out, and calls the phone company and says, "I just got a call from someone threatening to kill me! Can you tell me where it came from?" And they say, "Don't you have Caller ID?" And she says, "Um, no. No, this isn't even my house. I'm babysitting." And then they say, "Still, Caller ID is quite affordable. It's only 95 cents per month. Would you like to add this service?" And she says, "No, no, really, that's fine. Just tell me where that last call came from." And they say, "It’ll cost you $1.95. Now, you'll notice that, if you had Caller ID, you'd get that service for just 95 cents per month, so if you do the math, you'll realize that, even if you only get one death threat every two months, it's still more economical to have the Caller ID service." And the girl says, "Look, just tell me who called with the fucking death threat." And they say, "There's no need to be rude. We're trying to be helpful. And this month, Caller ID is part of a special package that also includes a free-callback option..." And they keep trying to push the Caller ID service on her for, like, an hour.