How To Get Me To Hang Up On You | Hacker News Reader

How To Get Me To Hang Up On You

avc.com

30 pointspeter12327 comments

I used to get this from time to time in a previous job. I always (without exception) immediately hung up. Sometimes I got remonstrations from whoever was trying to place the call and I would respond as gently as possible - if Mr X (it always was a Mr) wants to talk to me then they will pick up the phone and call me. If they can't be bothered then I can't be bothered to hear from them

This is not arrogance but a matter of common civility.

What's uncivil about asking you to do me a favor by waiting 30 seconds?

In effect, they are asking for a favor in the middle of the favor.

The first favor is answering my call?

Yes. A phone call is an interruption. More people should treat it that way.

Yes, thank you! My cell phone is set to emit no sound when I get called, nor do I notice the vibrate all the time. When I'm busy I just don't notice it's "ringing". People actually get annoyed with me.

It really irks me when people assume I should always answer the telephone whenever they call.

They're already assuming the favor before asking. It's literally borrowing someone's time before asking if it's ok.

Why can't you just call when you're ready to talk?

> What's uncivil about asking you to do me a favor by waiting 30 seconds?

My time is worth more to me than your time is worth to me. If you want something from me, you'll have more success if you value my time as highly as I do.

Easily solved: when they put you on hold, transfer the call to YOUR assistant (or some willing co-worker if you don't have one). When the caller comes on the line, your accomplice says "OK, please hold the line and I'll get him." Turnabout is fair play.

I hope this does not escalate.

I hope it does. What would the next level be?

A polite way to do it would be for the assistant to say: "Hello, my name is Bob. I'm calling on behalf of Alice who would like to speak with you on the phone. Might you have a moment to speak with Alice now or may we schedule a phone appointment for later today?" Of course, if the matter is not urgent but can't be handled by email, an even better solution is for Alice to send email requesting a phone appointment in the first place.

I'd hold that line if the person calling were important to me, i.e. they were the VC, or press or the president. If they were selling me something I wouldn't wait.

Same here. Irony is, some people in certain cultures don't respect you if you pick up the phone and call saying you are the owner of the company. As I posted in the OP, we closed a deal after putting my friend in between the deal to act like my secretary. Until we did that, we weren't perceived that highly even by the secretary at the other end.

But seriously, I am not letting a deal go because I am irked by a practice like this, no matter how annoying it may be.

"we closed a deal after putting my friend in between the deal to act like my secretary"

That's brilliant. I'm going to try that too.

Let's say someone makes an average of 20 calls every day. Since no one answers their phone anymore only 5 of those get picked up. That's 15 voicemails to leave and 5 calls to take. Those 15 calls/voicemails took at least 30 minutes probably. That's 30+ minutes per day his assistant can save him. So 2.5+ hours of his week he can save, just by making you wait 30 seconds for his assistant to transfer the call when you do pick up.

It doesn't seem arrogant or lame in that scenario. Now, if they make you wait more than a minute for the called to be transferred that's not cool in my book. They should be ready to immediately handle any calls that do get answered.

In that case, he could just dial the number, put the speaker on, and continue doing his important work.

The call will either flat out after a minute or three, or someone will answer and he can talk to them immediately.

A more appropriate way (and what a lot of VCs do when talking to entrepreneurs pitching them) would be to have your assistant set up a call time via email, then make the call yourself.

I agree, that is better. It only works when you know well in advance that you need to talk to someone though. You still have to handle all the other unscheduled calls somehow.

Text messaging.

> So 2.5+ hours of his week he can save, just by making you wait 30 seconds for his assistant to transfer the call when you do pick up.

You're doing the arithmetic wrong. You're saving 2.5 hours but it costs each person who answers 30 seconds or so.

You're also doing the valuation wrong. Yes, you're willing to spend my 30 seconds to save yourself some time, but the relevant question is whether I'm willing to spend 30 seconds to save you that time.

It's like asking everyone you see for $1. From your point of view, everyone should give, because it's only a dollar from them and the end result is that you'd have a pile of money. You'd much rather be rich than let them keep their dollar. However, the relevant question is whether they think that it's worth a dollar to them to make you rich.

I'm sure if he got a 'Please hold for the president' he wouldn't be doing any hanging up, some people's time is more important than his.

That, or the guy coming on the line owes him money.

A lot of these rules are relative.

Which is sort of the point. I hate when people do this too but people started doing it because other people put them on hold. So it's basically being preemptively rude to someone else to keep them from being rude to you.

Whether it's effective depends on who has the power in the relationship. As you say, if the President really did call I suspect he would wait (and if he didn't he'd be a fool). But when someone else calls him they're probably asking for money which means he has the power in the relationship and can hang up.

Even if you don't give a fig for the president's time you'd still be concerned in that case about the potential personal cost of hanging up vs. potential benefit of staying on the line.

there should be automated service for this... esp. for customer service calls.

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