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>I'd prefer not to waste the time of human employees on the phone because they're just minimum wage workers trying to earn a paycheck.

I'm still perfectly fine wasting their time.

Honestly, I don't get this reasoning that if they are doing it for a small financial gain, they are resolved of any blame for any harm they cause (even if the harm is just annoying me and wasting my time). Yet I see the reasoning being used in multiple instances where they are causing hassle or worse (say when they lie to you about whats in phone contracts, which is my pet peeve).

>I don't get this reasoning that ... they are resolved of any blame ... annoying me ... causing hassle

Yes, I agree that annoyance is being made and hassle is being caused but I assign the "they" part more to the owners of the businesses rather than the low-level employees working the phones. Those workers are just cogs in a wheel. Therefore, I don't derive any satisfaction of justice by making employees suffer the games of an AI Turing Test. On the other hand, I am happy when business owners pay $100,000 fines for ignoring the Do-Not-Call list.

The workers vs owners distinction is the same for fast-food cashiers asking "do you want to Super Size that?", or Radio Shack employee requesting my phone number for their database, or a retail employee trying to sell me an "extended warranty". For each of those situations, I'm annoyed but it's not necessary for me to socially shame the low-level workers with rants about obesity and high-fat consumption, the dangers of privacy invasion and identity theft, and the financial foolishness of 3rd-party warranties. All those employees are just cogs in a wheel and they are required to follow a script and upsell those things. Otherwise, they are fired. I see most telemarketing employees in equivalent situations++. Waging war with those low-level employees seems like fighting the wrong layer. Instead, just don't spend money with the business or utilize technical tricks (e.g. phone TeleZapper).

++To level set, I'm not talking about criminal activities such as scammers making calls to trick senior citizens into wiring their life savings. I'm talking about the single mother or starving college student who sees a job ad for "$8/hour tele-sales" and hopes to get money for diapers or ramen noodles. The telemarketing I was thinking of was newspaper subscriptions, church donations, burglar alarms monitoring, etc.

>For each of those situations, I'm annoyed but it's not necessary for me to socially shame the low-level workers with rants about obesity and high-fat consumption, the dangers of privacy invasion and identity theft, and the financial foolishness of 3rd-party warranties.

And yet, if we did that to such an extent that most people couldn't work those jobs with those policies, would not society be better off as a whole?

>Waging war with those low-level employees seems like fighting the wrong layer.

Speaking of war, the general way it goes is that you shoot the soldiers even though they are just following orders and there are a dozen more to take their place. Ideally taking out the general would be best, but when not given the opportunity to do so you target the highest ranking person in front of you, even if that is the lowly private who is on the same level as you.

> And yet, if we did that to such an extent that most people couldn't work those jobs with those policies, would not society be better off as a whole?

Your attitude isn't just out of touch with reality, it's somewhere between 'callous and unsympathetic' and 'sociopathic.'

Roughly 95% of the people who work in crappy low-wage jobs like fast food or call centers already hate their jobs. They already hate what their employers tell them they have to do. They aren't there because they love cold calling strangers or asking you to upgrade your meal by 1000 calories, they're there because they need a paycheck and have little other alternative.

I can only speak from personal experience regarding call centers, but I imagine fast food isn't very different. Most people absolutely do get out of those jobs as fast as they can. In the call center I worked at, average tenure was 6 months if not less (that's exactly how long I lasted, FWIW). And you know what? Every time a person walks out the door, someone else walks in to take their place, because the world has no shortage of desperate people.

Taking the stance of 'we should torture these people as much as possible because we don't have access to their employers' is bad enough, but to smugly claim that it's really for their own good and the good of society is frankly disturbing.

>Your attitude isn't just out of touch with reality, it's somewhere between 'callous and unsympathetic' and 'sociopathic.'

As is needed of any soldier killing a guy who doesn't want to be there just as much as they don't. Probably the most sociopathic thing I did today was I just ate a Butterfingers candy bar, made by Nestle, and thus likely involved child slavery, which I funded by buying the candy bar. But I do think my informed apathy is a step up from ignorant bliss.

>Roughly 95% of the people who work in crappy low-wage jobs like fast food or call centers already hate their jobs. They already hate what their employers tell them they have to do. They aren't there because they love cold calling strangers or asking you to upgrade your meal by 1000 calories, they're there because they need a paycheck and have little other alternative.

And if their work isn't a net harm for me, I'll try try to make their day more pleasant. But when I'm at the local cell store again because another family member was lied to about their contract, or when you just interrupted my concentration while solving some problem to try to get me to sign up for some service that will be near impossible to cancel and which comes with more fine print than my employment contract, then I am not going to excuse you just because you did such for money.

>Taking the stance of 'we should torture these people as much as possible because we don't have access to their employers' is bad enough, but to smugly claim that it's really for their own good and the good of society is frankly disturbing.

>torture

I found the bug.

What do you do for a living, and how is it making the world a better place?

Software to aid the following:

Environmental protection. Benefit should be obvious.

Reducing drunk driving. Ditto.

Insurance (not the kind that would be better off replaced by single payer). Probably the least obvious as it is closest of the three to rent seeking, but the benefit is spreading risk of the incidents insured. Perhaps not as ideal as a fully socialized government system, but this isn't one of the insurance fields that is in direct competition with single payer.

Do you want a list of my non-work related contributions to society as well?

> The workers vs owners distinction is the same for fast-food cashiers asking "do you want to Super Size that?", or Radio Shack employee asking for my phone number, or a retail employee trying to sell me an "extended warranty".

Each of your examples is providing me with a service; making food, ringing up my order, charging my card, or otherwise servicing the store of which I'm a customer. I'm happy to allow them some room for corporate bullshit, because they're also doing something I want them to do.

What does a telemarketer do for me?

Listening on lenny bot (A older and more basic bot with plenty of recordings on youtube), I wonder how common it is for those working at telemarketing to start down the slippery slope of scamming.

A question that the game paper please asked, is how plausible it is for a person living near staving condition to give up on their own income on the basis of morals. If at the same time you are working in a environment which directly rewards unmoral behavior with promotions, I wonder if such that behavior doesn't simply become the norm and moral people either quit or do not take up the job in the first place.

"Those workers are just cogs in a wheel"

How does your analysis translate to soldiers who are ordered to torture prisoners? Or Dickens-style juvenile pickpockets?

So, if a rip-off gang accosts you in the streets some night, and one of the low level flunkies clonks you over the head and takes your money while the gang leader watches, you wouldn't defend yourself? Because it's not his fault?

Consider that he is likely in the gang to protect his little siblings. You don't even want to know what happens to a younger sister when their older brother doesn't join a gang for protection. And if he didn't attack you... well let's just say gangs can be very creative in their methods of punishment. If anything, the low level flunky has far more to lose than just a pay check, so if anything, their behavior would be more justified (if you go with the logic).

I used to work as a telemarketer because there was a recession on and that was the only job I could find after months of looking. I was literally a couple weeks away from being homeless, so I wasn't much inclined to care if I was causing hassle. It's legal, there's a market for it, and I need to eat.

If it makes you feel better about yourself to shit on your economic inferiors, you go right ahead. But if you think you're teaching that telemarketer a lesson or somehow punishing them, you're not. They won't even remember you at the end of the day. You are one of 100+ calls that telemarketer has to make every day. And if you don't say the magic words "please take my name off your list", they will call you again next week. So you're really just wasting your own time.

>It's legal, there's a market for it, and I need to eat.

Releasing steam against the telemarketer is legal, there's a reason for it, and it relieves the immediate tension build up.

>They won't even remember you at the end of the day.

Depends upon spontaneous creativity. I don't have much, so they probably want. But in some ways, even if you don't directly recall the experience, it can still have an impact. If I had not eaten every meal I don't remember anything about, I would be dead right now.

>If it makes you feel better about yourself to shit on your economic inferiors,

You make it sound like it is because they are economically inferiors is the reason people react negatively and in doing so ignore all the actual reasons people don't like telemarketers.

>So you're really just wasting your own time.

The telemarketer already did that for me.

Exactly who are the owners of "Cardholder Services", or "Account Services" or that company that vaguely implies they're from Microsoft Tech Support?

How can I complain? Because I have a load of complaints for each of those companies, and I want to turn them in to the FCC for spoofing their Caller ID, which is illegal.

No? Crickets?

The sole and only weapon we have is to waste the time of the call center people. In at least some of the "Rachel from Cardholder Services" calls, the call center people are in on the scam - they collect credit card number, last 4 of social, CVV and ZIP code of billing address, which is more than enough to use the credit card number without the cardholder's knowledge. In summary, they deserve what they get, and they know it.

>> How can I complain? Because I have a load of complaints for each of those companies, and I want to turn them in to the FCC for spoofing their Caller ID, which is illegal.

The real question... Why is caller ID spoofing even possible. I assert that it should not be.

It was never designed to be secure, but businesses saw a short-term opportunity and built on a foundation of sand anyway.

Same story with abusing SSNs as an authentication mechanism.

Sadly the phone system is an enormous legacy beast, so this is a lot easier said than done.

Actually, the FCC has several ways for you to report spoofing: https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us/articles/2026543...

The FCC could enforce anti-caller ID-spoofing without me, if they wanted to. I believe they have the authority. This is just another way to leave the status quo alone, and put the burden on the victims.

I've reported any number of robocalls-to-do-not-call numbers to the FCC, and exactly nothing has happened. I have no faith that complaining about spoofed caller ID will cause any action at all.

So, instead of ignoring the annoying spoofed/hidden caller, I now have to answer (to try and figure out who is calling me), waste time, try calling back to see if they'll remove me from list, and if not submit forms to FCC in the hopes the FCC can/will do anything?

I'm pretty close to the point where I just leave the ringer on my phone off permanently. If somebody calls and I want to speak to them, I'll eventually call back. This sucks because I do speak to my parents on the phone, so we end up playing a lot of phone-tag trying to reach each other.

The employees are there to make calls. I don't see having to deal with a robot as wasting their time, since they are hopefully being paid regardless. Now, if they are being paid on commission, then they are part of the problem, and removing the incentive will help correct the annoyance.

Most call center employee's continuing employment is predicated on making sales, if they don't meet a quota they get fired.

I feel like we might be in a better situation if we had a strong social safety net for the unemployed instead of annoying me and scamming old people to support the otherwise-unemployed. (Don't forget to vote, folks.)

...thus removing the incentive and help correcting the annoyance.

> My irritation is with the owners of the telemarketing company.

Sadly, the best way to do this is to make it less profitable for them to employ these business practices. And there are only two ways for you to do that: don't buy their products and force them to spend more money per sale (i.e. waste their time).

> Sadly

Why "sadly"? It is great that we can drive them out of the market just by not paying them, without laws, politics and any kind of coercion.

They can harass you at will, just because a small percentage of the people they harass are into it.

How is that not an issue for the law?

Nah, fuck 'em. If you have no respect for me or my time, I have no respect for yours.

Nearly everything sold by telemarketing is a scam or predatory in some way. If you're already on the do not call list, then every sales call you get that's not from a company you're already doing business with is a scam. I have no issue with wasting as much of their time as possible.

Side note: Thankfully I have my Android phone set to quiet hours until 8am when I was getting up today, otherwise I'd have been awakened by a scam health insurance robo-call before then.

> I'd prefer not to waste the time of human employees on the phone because they're just minimum wage workers trying to earn a paycheck. My irritation is with the owners of the telemarketing company.

It is the reason to waste telemarketing company owners money. As a result, telemarketing would become less effective, and employees would lose their job, but it is a good thing.

The goal is not more workplaces. Artificial workplaces are worse than charity or basic income. When people do useless jobs, such as selling tickets, advertising over the phone or on streets etc. they are wasting their time. They can spend it looking for a more interesting job or learning some new skill.

If the end goal is to defeat telemarketing, they will end up jobless regardless.

I'm quite happy to waste the time of the guys who I have received calls from recently. They are total assholes and have been harassing people for years if my research into their phone number and company name is anything to go by.

The actual (Indian, but the company is based in London) callers have been known to call and hang up repeatedly, insult or threaten the person being called when they demand to be taken off their contacts list ot demand to know where they got their information from in the first place etc.

> the special 3 beeps intro actually works to fool robo-dialers

I've setup a service so if the number is withheld or international, it plays a recording asking the user to press 1 to speak to a person. It works 95% of the time.

I assume the dialers interpret it as an answer machine so don't connect the call to a real person. A couple of family members have withheld numbers, and they know they just need to press 1 as soon as they here it to reach us.

Almost every single telemarketing call I get these days is coming from not only my own area code but also my own prefix (using random, clearly spoofed numbers). Incredibly annoying, it's at the point where I don't answer the phone for anyone in my own prefix who I don't already have in contacts.