filtoid

The world will always need exterminators

Bad case of Irritable Towel Syndrome

If it looks like a nazi duck and it's wearing a shoe, it's probably doing a goose-step

I'm in my forties and I think every milestone decade has been better than the last. I also wholeheartedly agree with the above statements. I hope you continue to do the things that make you happy and carry on your enjoyment of them :)

That's fair. It seems there's a good scene in recording Scam Baiting antics and putting it on You Tube too.

I think you may misunderstand what I did. It was reaching out to people who had opted in to be part of market research. If they said "don't contact me again" or if they were hostile then they got on the "no-call" list and were never contacted again. The only way that we could have got their phone number is if they submitted it during some sort of sign-up process somewhere. So I think you might be equating the work I did with something else.

The "cold" part of the "cold-calling" I mentioned above was because they weren't explicitly expecting the call, but they had somewhere signed up and agreed to be contacted.

Refusing to take work is a rather privileged position, not everyone has that luxury, and I didn't at the time. That being said I was out of there as quick as I could find something else (I only did 2 weeks).

I have a contact in my phone called Spam (with a picture of Spam), and I add any number that doesn't pass the sniff test within 30s (particularly Robo-spammers, urgh!), it can very helpful to get a repeat call and the picture of a can of spam tells me not to bother picking up.

This is an excellent way of screening. The company I worked for was an opt-in service. So all people being called had at some point agreed to it (though most forget ticking the box on a form or whatever, which is totally understandable), and we therefore had their names, so it wouldn't have worked for what we were doing. But yes if a cold-caller doesn't know who they're calling then it's a good indication you don't need what they're offering.

I heard a podcast with Scott Hanselman (a technologist in the US) and he had a phone system where you had to say the name of the person you wanted to an automated gate-keeper, which sounded like a really cool system, and similar to the sort of screening you're doing.

In respect to 1) you're absolutely correct, that should be two sentences and not the horrible run-on that I created.

In response to 2), yes I can understand being wary of spam callers, there weren't nearly as many 15 years ago when I was doing the job. It was targeted research, so people who'd opted in to being contacted for marketing purposes ("how is your new toaster working out for you") or local authority requests for comment ("are you happy with the new park that opened").

I've had some real howlers the other way though (with actual scammers) so I understand the frustration, one woman who was obviously a spam PPE caller yelled at me "don't you like money!" after I had politely declined,and there's no dealing with that. In the end the easiest thing to do and a definite improvement on being nasty, is just hang up, in my opinion.

You ended your post with "fuck telemarketers", on a post where I was highlighting that I hated having to do that job, so yeah, you demonstrate a distinct lack of empathy, if there's a wider context on that comment please let me know, as I'm not trying to strawman you, when you explicitly stated I deserved to be treated like that.

The fact you think telemarketing is about selling a product and not market research (about all sorts of things including political opinions, or NGOs etc) shows that you don't know what you're talking about and seem like an angry person. I'm going to disengage now, but I hope you can find peace :)

I mean, I was good with people hanging up during the spiel. Saying "sorry I'm not interested" is more than fine and likely to put you on the upper end of calls that's day. Swearing or getting upset isn't acceptable and fails to recognise that neither of you want to be on that call.

However telemarketing has a better response rate than paper based surveys, and the data is used to drive decision making. A lot of people complain when things don't work out for you - like local council decisions on new amenities, but if you don't submit your opinion you can't be heard. It's not perfect but it is used to define a surprising number of things.

Wrt to you MIL, yeah, it's not nice to be on the recieving end of hostility, I get it can be annoying but as I implied above nobody chooses the job, I personally had to take whatever I could get and I was too young/not out of work long enough for JSA (plus JSA is a pain to get anyway, but that's a whole different story).

"sorry, I'm not interested" and hanging up is fine, cursing my family and telling me what a PoS I am, not so much. I think it's clear you've never had to work in the service industry if you think that working a job like this dehumanizes you and justifies rudeness of this scale.