Ok, actually, that was called “sweet simplicity” if you are talking about the honey-like goo and paper thing. And I know because I was the poor girl stuck on the other end of the phonecall when you ordered.

Actually, probably not you, since I assume you are a normal person. But for 3 glorious months after my freshman year of college, I worked graveyard shift inbound telemarketing. So if you watched any of those commercials from 11pm to 7 am, and called in, I was one of the call takers. And what a fantastic job it was.

See, all of the 1800 numbers go into the same office warehouse, where we all sit in cubes. They would flash up a sign with a product name as these commercials were running to let us know what sort of influx to expect. The sweet simplicities and the time lifes were nice, because the company usually sprang for a separate 800 number, so we knew right away what the person was calling for and could be prepare by the electronic script that popped up on our terminal screen.

But lots of companies shared the number. And that was especially hard for those of us working graveyard, because only about 30% of the people who called wanted to order something.

The rest were usually lonely, drunk, psychotic, or some mix of the three.

Unfortunately, the business had one rule: you CANNOT hang up the phone until you have a product name, as then the telemarketing company could charge the other business for service, regardless of whether a transaction took place. So a typical phone call on a non-dedicated line went a little something like this…

CALLER: What are you wearing right now?

ME: Absolutely nothing, sir. May I please have a product name?

or

CALLER: Can you guess what I have in my hand right now?

ME: I assume it’s the telephone, sir. Now may I please have a product name, please?

I was never so happy to go back to school in my life.

Magic Bullet: awesome product, although mine died after trying to make my own ground beef. Also my included cookbook was missing the middle 10 pages. I replaced it with a knockoff brand of magic bullet when I had my kid to make homemade baby food.

Magic Thigh Trainer: I was mesmerized by the effortless fun twisting motion on the informercials. Shockingly, not so much fun in real life. Given away for free at our garage sales by two giggling tweens. I’m sure their mother was thrilled.

Dryer balls- did a comparison and no, my towels didn’t dry faster or fatter- it just made more racket in my dryer.

Scunci Steamer: another informercial that mesmerized me. I used this a few times with success (it basically cleans similarly to regular elbow grease except it does so without any chemicals, which is nice). I eventually tired of it though because it would run out of water and you have to wait for it to completely cool before refilling. I let it sit in a closet for a year and now it is all jammed up with lime deposits and is unusable.

I’ve added it to my Netflix queue. Thanks!

I’ve also thought about the magic bullet…

I’ve only had bad experiences with informercials. Like the time I bought Nad’s “sugaring” system to wax my legs. Oh. My. God.