You don't have to say 'drop dead' -- the Rejection Hotline can do it for you

You know the type we're talking about. The well-muscled-perfectly-coifed dude with the ego of a rock star and the personality of a turnip. The woman with five cats -- all of whom have left their hairy love on her sweater. The 35-year-old mouth-breather who can't stop talking about his extensive collection of Star Wars action figures. Sometimes these people tell you they want to "get to know you better" or "have a drink with you" or "jam my tongue down your throat."

This, of course, is when you give them the "I'd sooner close-dance with a porcupine" vibe. And yet, somehow, they remain harder to shake than a booger from your finger.

Thankfully, an entrepreneur from Atlanta has begun offering a service to help savvy singles gracefully rid themselves of those who are get-a-clue challenged.

His name is Jeff Goldblatt, and in 14 cities across the United States (including Seattle) he has created the Rejection Hotline.

It works like this: You're at a club/bar/church picnic and an undesirable latches on like a koala bear to a eucalyptus tree.

When this offputting admirer presses you to give him/her your phone number, you simply jot "206-781-3928" onto a piece of paper and hand it over with a wink and an air kiss. Walk quickly to the exit. Do not look back.

Eventually (s)he will feverishly dial the digits, only to reach a voice message that says:

"The person who gave you this number did not want you to have their real number. Maybe you suffer from bad breath, body odor or even both. Maybe you just give off that creepy, overbearing, psycho-stalker vibe. Maybe the idea of going out with you just seems as appealing as playing leapfrog with unicorns."

(!!!!)

"Please do your best to forget about the person who gave you this number, because trust us they've already forgotten about you."

Although this sounds unusually cruel and, let's be honest, downright sadistic, Goldblatt envisions his telephone service as a kindness -- yes, a kindness to both the would-be dator and the would-be datee.

"How so?" you ask, envisioning what the rejected suitor's ego must look like upon hearing this merciless message (something like a possum run over by a Mack truck, we think).

It seems 25-year-old Goldblatt and his friends first struck upon this idea last year while at a bar (which, as we all know, is where most truly great ideas get their start).

As Goldblatt tells it, he and five friends watched "an older, slightly overweight, bald guy" approach "an attractive young blond girl." Said bald guy proceeded to make amorous advances upon said blonde girl, who responded strongly in the negative.

She then proceeded to eviscerate the man's sense of pride and self-respect in front of not only his friends but a crowd of buzzed onlookers.

This caused Goldblatt and friends to ponder one of the great questions facing humankind: Is it better to be humiliated by a blonde in public or to be humiliated by a blonde in the privacy of your own home?

We trust you know the answer.

Says Goldblatt, "This way, the rejector gets the person off their back and the rejectee is not publicly embarrassed."

Goldblatt started the first hot line in Atlanta as a joke. He gave the number to a few friends who passed it on. "Before we knew it, it was getting hundreds of calls and then thousands of calls," he says.

Goldblatt and friends can spot a megatrend when they see one. They invested several thousand of their own dollars into setting up Rejection Hotlines across the country -- Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Miami, among others. There's also one in Dublin, Ireland.

Seattle's line went live in July (206-781-3928). Of course, they also started a Web site: www.rejectionhotline.com.

These hot lines are now averaging well over 10,000 calls a week in each city -- although Goldblatt suspects the vast majority of those calls are not from masses of rejected troglodytes but from people who've heard about the line and simply want to listen to the message.

No matter what, the Rejection Hotline is . . . ahem . . . hotter than ever. High call volume has crashed the hot lines in some cities. Boston's line crashed after receiving more than 24 calls a minute.

Goldblatt and crew are in the process of a major upgrade to their systems that will allow them not only to bring the Rejection Hotline to more cities but also to eliminate the high-volume problems.

They're also trying to figure out how to break even on this mission of mercy. Goldblatt -- who is getting his MBA from Emory University -- has already found several small sponsors for the Rejection Hotline and is currently talking to some major corporations in hopes of convincing them to use it as an advertising vehicle.

Meanwhile, desperate singles have been begging Goldblatt to start hot lines in their cities. A woman from Alaska pleaded with him to install a rejection line in Anchorage, where the men vastly outnumber the women. "The odds are good but the goods are odd," she complained.

P-I reporter Winda Benedetti can be reached at 206-448-8223 or windabenedetti@seattlepi.com

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