Swingers

The male species puffs out his chest, struts over to the female, fumbles through some conversation, perhaps buys her an Appletini, and, if all goes well, scores her cell-phone number.

After the respectable three days have passed (remember the movie Swingers?), the male calls the female. But if she has given him the number 407-970-8278, he is in for a rude surprise.

"You've reached the Rejection Hotline!" a cheerful voice says. " . . . Unfortunately, the person who gave you this number did not want you to have their real number." Then the voice rattles off a host of reasons for the rejection -- arrogance, body odor, a "psycho-stalker vibe."

The man behind the voice, Jeff Goldblatt, originated the Rejection Hotline four years ago. He was at an Atlanta bar and observed a man flirting with an uninterested woman, who ultimately told the man to get away from her.

Even the man's friends were laughing at him. There had to be a less humiliating way of rejecting someone, Goldblatt figured. So he recorded a Rejection Hotline message, first as a joke, but then word spread. Today, about 1.6 million callers dial the number each month, including 50,000 in Orlando, Goldblatt says. Local numbers are available for about 30 cities. Goldblatt, an MBA student at Emory University, also runs rejectionhotline.com, a site that makes a profit through advertisements, sponsorships and products for sale such as Rejection Hotline underwear.

"You don't know someone's history, and you don't know how they may have been hurt in the past," Savage says. "You don't know what kind of reaction someone might have."

John Fuhrman, author of Reject Me -- I Love It! 21 Secrets for Turning Rejection into Direction, recommends offering a reason for rejecting someone. Constructive criticism, if you will.

"There is definitely a need for it [the hotline]," says Fuhrman, who is known in some circles as "Mr. Rejection." "If you've got someone you can't shake off, absolutely, use the number."

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