A handy how-to guide of sorts

[go_team]

(summarized in a comment to boojum's journal, expanded here because I'm snarky like that)

Really, phone solicitors start out with a strike against them when they have the misfortune to call a phone I'm answering. But there are a few sure-fire ways to make that bad situation even worse, for instance:

1. Waking me up.
2. Calling me by Peter's last name. Today's second caller went for "Ms." instead of "Mrs.", but that's not much of an improvement. I know his is the only name listed for our number in the phone book, but in these modern times it's really not that unusual to have people with different last names sharing an address, so what the hell? Maybe they were trying for a personalized approach, hoping I'd respond positively if they correctly guessed my name? I wonder what the expected value is on that kind of thing: me, I grew up learning to spot telemarketers and their ilk by their manglings of names, and as mentioned above tend to default-hostile towards telemarketers anyway, with an extra dose of snark if they get my name wrong. Ramble ramble ramble... Any which way, it was 9 AM and I was trying to sleep in for just a little longer, despite the cat's best efforts. Sigh.

I really don't want to be a bitch to phone solicitors, really. I wish I could be just be civil. Rationally, I know they've got a really sucky job, and the sooner I can squeeze "put me on your 'don't call' list" into the conversation, the sooner I can get on with my life and they can stop wasting their time with me. But ugh. Two calls in one day that rubbed me so very the wrong way is a lot.

Comments

[goteam.livejournal.com]

I didn't even get that far. When they asked for Mrs./Ms. Notmylastname, I said "No" and they were perplexed. The first one shifted into the gear of asking to speak to "the man or lady of the household", and I was too tired to think of explaining that there's one man and two ladies in this household; instead I said, "You're talking to me. What are you selling?" The next one asked if he'd called the Notmylastname residence, and I said, "Peter is one of three people who lives here," but I don't know if I successfully conveyed the point that not everybody lives in a nice little nuclear family with all one last name. Sigh.

[iainuki.livejournal.com]

Now that I think about it, when I answer the phone at my parent's house (not as often these days, more common when I was at Mudd) and they ask for my father, I often did confuse them by saying, "I'm not him." My usual second line, though, was "I'm his son," which most of them seemed to be able to wrap their minds around.

"'You're talking to me. What are you selling?'" I'll have to remember that line for the next time I take a telemarketing call at a residence that isn't mine . . .