Cold callers

[Dr Jekyll]

The phone rang a few minutes ago.

'Hello is that Dr Jekyll?'

'Yes'

'Good morning, I'm from such and such investments and I'd like to spend a few minutes going through what we can do for you'

At this point I felt it was at least an improvement on the usual 'hellohowareyoutoday' from someone who doesn't introduce themselves. So rather than let the caller waste his time telling me how he can make my fortune I told him quite politely that I wasn't interested. The rest of the conversion went as follows.

'Did you catch the name of my firm?'

'No'

'Good, you're a fking , goodbye.'

Isn't it time all cold calling was simply banned? The TPS service is totally ignored anyway.

[Dr Jekyll]

Snowboy said:

I hate cold calling.
However, I do find that story mildly amusing.

Cold callers (that aren't foreign) are generally minimum wage temp workers doing jobs they hate.
By being a bit mischevious it must make the job a little more bearable.

Bullst.

Cold callers are sick people who get their kicks from annoying others. I wouldn't be allowed to make obscene phone calls so why should they?

[Dr Jekyll]

P-Jay said:

I just put the phone down, it's annoying but I've been on the other end of things getting my first foot on the employment ladder and annoying people for £3 an hour. It really is one of the worse jobs in the Western World, I've done in-bound too which is just as soul destroying - at least back in the early 90's there wasn't such thing as zero hours contracts so you would occasionally get 5 blissful mins between calls to exorcize your mind when they were 'over staffed'.

If you're the creative type, by all means come up with some strange story or 'wind them up' it'll be the highlight of their hellish day - swearing and shouting won't make a dent though, imagine making 100-200 cold calls a day, the odd 'f bomb' isn't going to make you bat an eyelid.

But maybe if they always got an 'f bomb' and never managed to sell anything the employers might decide to stop employing them.

[Dr Jekyll]

Ayahuasca said:

Cold calling is a valid and ethical way of generating business, you know - the stuff that makes the economy work and produces the money that buys nice things like cars.

A polite "no" followed by putting the phone down is all you need to do if you are not interested. Making an already tough job tougher by playing tricks on the caller is a bit unfair in my opinion.

It's business that makes the economy work, not cold calling. Most, in fact virtually all, businesses manage to function without ever pestering people on their home phones night after night.

These bds don't take 'no' for an answer.