While it’s true that a lot of telemarketers are just folks trying to make ends meet, you still shouldn’t feel bad about hanging up on them in mid-sentence.
Many telemarketers aren’t actually allowed to end a call without making a sale; if they did so voluntarily, they’d be fired. By corporate edict, that call was only ever going to end in one of two ways: with you buying something, or with you hanging up on them. There’s no point trying to end the conversation politely because the script they’re working off of demands that they ignore and obstruct any attempt to do so – and they will be punished for failing to follow it.
You hanging up on them is literally the only way for them to get out of a call that’s not going anywhere, so you might as well get it over with. You’re actually doing them a favour.
Yes.
This is also an instance of a more general principle: notice when people are weaponizing social norms, and react by refusing to play the game.
Easy mode for this is the people on the street with pamphlets. They’ll weaponize social norms in an attempt to make you stop and talk to them. One script I see, for instance:
ACTIVIST: Hi! Excuse me, are you a student here?
PASSER-BY: –yes, I am.
ACTIVIST: Do you care about the ethical treatment of minorities on campus?
PASSER-BY: ….um, yes, but…
ACTIVIST: Were you aware that 90% of statistics about minorities are made up on the spot to serve as examples in tumblr posts?
PASSER-BY: …no, I wasn’t, but I really have to…
ACTIVIST: Here’s what our organization does to fight that!
…and so forth.
The trick here, of course, is that the first question is one which it’s socially unacceptable to avoid answering. If the activist opens with “would you like to help save a photogenic animal today?” you can say “no thank you.” If they open with “do you care about the whales?” you can grit your teeth and say “nope.”
But how do you respond to “are you a student here”? It’s a yes or no question, to which you definitely know the answer, so you can’t mumble something about not knowing. And it’s not explicitly related to their cause, so you can’t just automatically say “not today thanks.” (If you try either of those, they’ll call you on it – “what, you’re not a student today?”)
Ignoring them, or saying “that’s none of your business” or “leave me alone,” is a violation of social norms, and means you look like a jerk, because they asked a question that’s well within the realm of what’s socially permissible. So if you’re playing by social norms, you have to answer.
And then, once you’ve answered, you’re engaged in conversation with them. It’s an egregious violation of social norms to walk away from a conversation without going through the normal conversation-ending procedures. And they of course will not participate in those. So now you’re trapped, where you would have been free under social norms to walk past someone shouting at you about statistics if you hadn’t yet engaged with them.
The only way to escape these situations is to notice them and step outside the social game. This is hard; you will get intense this-is-awkward, I-am-being-awful-and-mean feedback from your brain, which has noticed you are violating the rules and would like you to stop. But walking away without saying anything, or saying “I don’t want to talk right now,” is in fact the correct thing to do here.
And that’s easy mode. People selling something play this game blatantly. Hard mode is people who play it expertly, within society, so that you have to go along with what they want or be forced into violating social norms. (And people will go along with a lot rather than violate social norms.) Friends who ask you for things in a way that makes it awkward to refuse. Family members who treat you badly but do it in a way contrived so that any complaint will constitute you being rude. In the really extreme cases, the same dynamic shows up in abusive relationships. It’s the adult version of an abuser convincing a kid he’ll get in trouble if he tells his parents.
So this is, IMO, a really important skill to learn and to deploy properly. Social norms are great, I love doing the dance of social convention, it’s lovely and satisfying, but if your partner keeps trying to stab you with a poisoned dagger, maybe it’s time to stop dancing. Even if that looks weird in the middle of the dance floor.
This is something I never thought needed to be broken down before, but once you did it helped make a lot of things clear. Like, I already knew that sales people are pushy and try to rope you into conversations that are difficult to terminate, but describing the reasons why those conversations feel so awkward to leave abruptly was super enlightening.
Day: November 1, 2017
Reminder that Obamacare open enrollment starts today and has been shortened to a 6 week period because the president is an animal.
NY: TURN YOUR BALLOT OVER
NY State residents, please be aware that on Election Day (11/7), the BACK of the ballot will have a referendum to vote on convening a NY Constitutional Convention. Placing it on the back of the ballot was a DELIBERATE move.
If it passes, it could be a disaster for ALL CURRENT AND FORMER NY State (including state, city, county, town, village and school district) public employees (police officers, firefighters, corrections officers, teachers, sanitation workers, teaching aides, librarians, bus drivers, lunch aides, highway workers, board of elections, etc.) who could stand to lose a great deal, including part or all of their pensions or medical benefits (even those who have already retired), that they were promised in return for their commitment to their careers in public service.
If you love anyone that is currently, or has ever been a NY public employee, please TURN YOUR BALLOT OVER and vote “NO”.
Oh c’mon! he’s just trying to be helpful. You don’t have to be so crabby over it. *ducks*
please please please teach your children to cook while they still live under your roof. even the most elementary things can’t be overlooked. because i just had to show my 24 year old boyfriend how to use a potato peeler and now i need to lay down for an hour
i hate this post because it just proves that like.. no simple statement can just be absorbed and the general population of tumblr go ‘yeah that sounds about right.’ i’ve had nazis say it’s a woman’s job to cook, terfs say that it’s only ‘males’ who don’t know how to cook, people have accused me of being classist because some people don’t own potatio peelers, called a bitch for airing out my boyfriend’s dirty laundry (which if the most embarrassing thing i can procure about the guy is that he’s not great in the kitchen i’d say he’s okay lmao)
just shut up and teach your fucking children to cook holy shit dude
Also, I legitimately did not know how to BOIL WATER as an 18 year old. My boyfriend (now husband) has literally taught me how to cook anything I’ve ever made, because my mom was convinced that if I was allowed in the kitchen I would burn the house down.
Do you know how terrified I was of cooking? How convinced I was that I would only lead to disaster if unleashed upon the kitchen? Do you know how many nights I ate peanut butter from the jar because there weren’t any microwaveable meal options in the house?
Teach your children to fucking cook so they always have the ability to feed themselves.
Who wants to hear my new conspiracy theory about lawyers
- Can’t legally lie, but they trade in half-truths and misleading language
- Obsessed with contracts
- Required to follow the letter (but not the spirit) of the law
- Really good at exploiting loopholes
- Range from semi-helpful to openly malevolent
Conclusion?? Faeries
How to tell the difference between one of the fae folk and a lawyer:
Fairies get offended if you pay them.
Note: this does leave some interesting ambiguity regarding pro bono lawyers
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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