Phone someone else's home, ET.

[mrissa]

Since I got home from Convivial we've had two calls to openly attempt to persuade us to vote for something or someone and two attempts to survey us. Since I didn't listen long enough to get to the questions, I can't say whether they were allegedly neutral polls or push polls. The first question was, "Will you tell me your name?", and my answer was a cheerful, "No thank you," and that stymied them, so then we were done.

I really don't much like the phone. Screening calls won't help, because we still have to deal with the noise and checking to see if it's someone we want to talk to, and one of the "private number unlisted" calls this week was someone whose number has shown up as listed before, with whom I wanted to talk. So it's a periodic annoyance, and I'm trying to be as cheerful and polite as I can with the people who are making these calls, because it's the only job some of them could get. And I feel like we're all a little on edge these days. So many people are coping with big difficult things, or with small things adding up to push on them the wrong way. And maybe it's just the people I know, but I don't think so. So it's worth being cheerful and polite to the people who interrupt my dinner, because who knows what they're going home to after. But on the other hand, there's no need for me to relax my boundaries, either. It's not a zero-sum game. Calm. Polite. Onwards.

Comments

[pieslut.livejournal.com]

I dislike the phone. I really dislike the idea that my number is public property (although I am unlisted). It just feels like if it comes into my house I should get to decide whether to admit entry. But as you say, even if I screen, there is the noise and the disturbance. Maybe I should put it on silent, and tell everyone that I only ever return calls on private/cell lines. But that seems like it would inconvenience others to make my life easier and I think that's exactly what I'm complaining about.

[rosefox]

I have a Nokia cellphone that lets me put people into caller groups and only allow calls from a certain group. Most of the time, it'll let anyone through, but when I'm going to bed or working and don't want to be bothered except for an emergency, I only allow calls from family. The best part of it is that I can choose how heavily to filter depending on how I feel at the moment. I highly recommend this.

[poeticalpanther.livejournal.com]

One of the things I like most about you is a persistent sense of your high level of empathy. Too many people rip off strips of nastybites on someone who really doesn't have much of a choice but to call you: it's call you or maybe not eat, or not have somewhere to sleep.

I like you. :)

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

what you said. ^^

i sometimes just hang up on them, but i would never harass someone for calling me. maybe hanging up on them is just as bad as saying "fuck off and never call me again, you Republican scum" or whatever, but probably not. sometimes i just can't get it up to even say "no, thank you" because that essentially means nothing to someone who's trained professionally not to recognise the word no.

[rosefox]

I made a bunch of calls tonight for MoveOn--though I waited until a chance came around to only call people who had provided their phone numbers with the understanding that they might receive calls asking them to volunteer--and have done telephone sales in the past. I can tell you that being hung up on is worlds better than "fuck off and never call me again", especially if you just hang up and don't slam the phone or anything like that.

Also, a lot of the people making politics-related calls are volunteers (though most of the pollsters and surveyers are probably paid) and I bet most of their scripts, like the one I was working off of tonight, have an option for "The person you're calling says 'I'm not interested' or 'Don't call me again'" and when you click that option the script tells you to say "Thanks very much, bye!".

As a middle option, you can always say "No thanks" and then hang up immediately.

And seriously, anything you do that recognizes the humanity of the person on the other end of the line is always appreciated. A friend of mine in California briefly staffed a volunteer phone bank asking people to vote against Proposition 8, and... well, I won't repeat some of the really horrible things that people said to him, but it was the worst sort of anti-gay slander, and I was just appalled that anyone could say something like that to another human being, even a stranger you disagree with who's calling during your dinner hour. So thank you very much for being polite and thinking about appropriate etiquette for this sort of situation.

[poeticalpanther.livejournal.com]

Mmm, I've been in that latter position before. Back in 1994, I was the lead on a local group campaigning to get an omnibus queer-rights bill past the Ontario Legislature (we lost, by a few votes). I got *so* many calls from people, strangers, who'd call up to say offensive, and sometimes outright threatening, things to me. I'd one guy who called up to ask me how same-sex marriages were functionally different from marrying a horse. I told him if he made that comparison again, our conversation would end suddenly; he did, and it did. He phoned *back*, to ask me why I'd hung up; I said if you're only going to be offensive, I don't need to talk to you.

My favourite, though, was an older man, he said he was in his 70s, and he was just confused. He said, "I don't understand - what are the kids going to call their second mother, or their second father?" I said, "Well, when I was a kid, I called my second father - or, in that case, stepfather - by his first name. I expect a lot of people will do that. Or maybe they'll just have particular ways to say mother or father, the way people distinguish their grandparents."

He thought about it for a minute, and said, "Y'know, my daughter's kids do that - they call her second husband by his name, so they can keep Dad for their Dad. That makes sense. Okay, then, I understand now. Thank you!"

My favourite cold-call in as an activist, ever. :)

My least favourite? The kid who phoned up to tell me he was going to rape me to death. Stupid little shit didn't realize that any activist who didn't have call-display (relatively new in 1994) wasn't smart enough to come in out of the rain. Just about shat himself when I called him *BACK*. And addressed him by name. :D

[rosefox]

Ugh, that's horrifying. Goodonya for putting up with that for the sake of your cause!

[rosefox]

Even people who "have a choice", like volunteers for political organizations, may feel their livelihoods are at stake. Phonebanking is hard. In my experience, people only volunteer for it if they are taking the issue at hand extremely seriously and feel that it has a major effect on their lives. It's not quite the direct route of call -> pay -> food and shelter, but these days there's an awful lot of weight behind call -> right person gets elected -> economy recovers -> food and shelter.

[poeticalpanther.livejournal.com]

Granted; lector is reminded that such things can be slightly different in Canada (IME). I've never had a call from any party but the one I support, and public issues don't go on ballots here either (for the most part, voter initiatives are a US issue, rather than a Canadian one). So my experience is almost exclusively with the kind who are working to either sell me things or raise money from me.

[rosefox]

That's interesting; I hadn't heard much about how volunteering, phone polling, etc. differs between the two countries. Thanks for the info.

[poeticalpanther.livejournal.com]

I do get called occasionally for market research, which I don't mind; particularly if they're taking political opinions, I'm always willing to take that time. But issue-based cold-calling just isn't a big thing here.

Maybe it's a population-density thing? We've got the population of California, and the land-mass smaller only than Russia's...

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, thanks.

[rosefox]

Thank you so much for your consideration, seriously.

And no, it's not just you; some of the people I spoke with tonight really wanted to volunteer but apologetically explained that they were dealing with a lot of family or personal problems right now. Hard times all around.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

With my Devil's Advocate hat on (because I don't tend to be nasty or crude even to commercial callers), the argument for not being nice to unwanted callers is that you're making it easier for the entire industry that creates this nuisance to exist, by making people more willing to work for them.

And just for the record -- the most destructive thing I know of to do is to politely and gently lead them on a wild goose chase for as long as you can. Wasting the time their employer is paying for, if it's a commercial call bank. Of course this also uses up your own time, so I rarely do it.

Sometimes they're so on script I can't get a word in edgewise. I still generally say "no thank you" as I hang up. And I hang up on those ones earlier.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, even raising my voice and interrupting to say, "NO THANK YOU," feels better than raising my voice and interrupting to say, "SHUT UP."

[greatestofnates.livejournal.com]

You reminded me of this awesome recording:
http://www.freetheflash.com/prankcalls/telemarketer-murder-prank-call.php

I don't get telemarketing calls on my cell phone, but I think the entertainment value is worth the time lost.

[crimini.livejournal.com]

A firm and polite, "No thank you" and "Please remove this number from your list as we would like not to receive any more unsolicited calls" has gone a long way. I also simply just hang up after asking them to remove us if they persist.

[redbird]

I just got a call from someone who said he was calling on behalf of my bank. I asked "What's up?" (because it's possible they have a real reason for calling). When he said he was conducting a customer satisfaction survey, I told him I'd be more satisfied if I didn't spend time on the telephone, wished him a good evening, and hung up without waiting for an answer.

Anti-Telemarketing Counterscript

[jymdyer.livejournal.com]

http://www.xs4all.nl/~egbg/counterscript.html

Hi

[themagdalen.livejournal.com]

I realized if I like reading your writing so much I should just give up and put you in my default reading list.

Despite LJ's odd idea of social relationships, this does not mean that I require you to read my posts about how the kid smeared his oatmeal in my hair again. Though of course you're welcome. :)

Re: Hi

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks for introducing yourself! Much appreciated; feel free to comment any time, of course.

I'm at a point with trying to read stuff online where I'm mostly stopping by to get large chunks of oatmeal-in-the-hair (or what-I-read-this-week or whatever people's focus is) rather than adding to the daily, but I will poke my head in to say hi from time to time.

Re: Hi

[themagdalen.livejournal.com]

Yay!
I'm using that method a lot myself.