Elayne Riggs' Journal (for Leah)

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Cold Call Codes

Got a cold call today from someone wanting to speak with "the person in charge of" phone hardware. For those non-office dwellers out there, that's code for "I'm trying to sell you something." The standard response is "We're very happy with our current system, please take us off your call list." It's a polite way of saying "eff off, please, we don't accept solicitations." Well, this time the persistent caller, instead of saying okie-dokie, went on to ask "What is your present phone system?" I should have realized I was in trouble then, as prolonging an unwanted conversation is one of their tricks. So I said, "I don't know, but we're happy with what we have," which apparently gave him the opening "If you don't know what you have, how do you know you're happy with it?" Now, while this is doubtless an interesting philosophical question to ponder I'd rather leave exploring its intricacies to this blog, so instead of responding with a tedious explanation that I was just trying to be polite as we don't respond to sales calls and please just kindly take a friggin' hint, I held my breath and tone of voice and said a curt and quiet "goodbye." But hey, I'll open the floor up to comments: Folks, if you think you're happy with something but you don't know what you have, how do you actually know you're happy? (And as a bonus, how do you think I should have responded to that question?)

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