Right now, I’m being polite.

I love messing with telemarketers. I have a sort of game I play with them to see what sort of reactions I can provoke.

I get
• one point if the conversation ends because they hung up on me,
• two points if I can make them audibly angry,
• three points if they yell at me,
• four points if they swear and
• five points if they start crying.

So far, nobody has gotten a perfect score by doing all of these, but I have had a few six point calls where they do the first three…

Some of my highest scoring calls have been from phone companies, wanting me to switch to their service plans. A little bit of deliberate obtuseness goes a long way in calls like that… For example, when they ask if you’re tired of paying long distance bills, ask them when they’re going to start paying them for you. Don’t let them backpedal out of it either, latch on like a terrier and demand to know where you should send the bills. The longer you can keep them off script, the better.

Another thing to ask is how they’re paid, on commission or hourly. They probably won’t tell you, but I find it helps to point out that if they’re paid hourly then I’ll hang up on them, but if they’re on commission I’ll stay on the line, wasting their time and keeping them from earning any money until they hang up. Thing is, some folks will stay on the line even after that. I think they may have some sort of company policy forbidding them from hanging up.

Monday night I got a phone call from MCI, asking if I wanted to change something about my phone service. You’ll notice that they never say that they want to sell you their service, it’s always presented as a ‘change’ instead of a sale… I had one of my better six point calls debating the difference between ‘sale’ and ‘change’ with an operator once. I was in a good mood though, and decided to let this one live…

“Hello?”
“Hello, I’m calling from a new local phone service provider abou…”
“Which phone provider?”
“MCI. We’ve just started offering local service in your area and…”
“Ah, MCI! You should have said. Do you have a database?”
“Uh… What?”
“A database of people that you call. Am I in it?”
“I’m not sure what…”
“Well, I should be. I’m a very unpleasant person you know. You should make sure that’s written down somewhere as a warning to others.”
“Oh… Uh… I’m calling from MCI about our new local…”
“I don’t think you understand. I said ‘I’m a very unpleasant person.'”
“Uh…”
“You see, right now, I’m being polite and warning you about this.”
“Sir?”
“I’m being polite and warning you that I am an unpleasant person.”
“I don’t understand…”
“I’m giving you an opportunity here to hang up your phone. Do you understand that?”
“Oh. Um. Goodbye?”

Only one point, but hey…