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Comment by tcas | Hacker News Reader

Just wait until they find your personal cell phone number and try to force you into scheduling a "time that works" on the calendar.

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Just wait until they find your wife's phone number. (OK, this wasn't datadog, but some similarly aggressive headhunting agency went from calling me to calling my wife - who is in no way affiliated with my company - to ask her if she could tell me about how they could help me in hiring, yadda yadda.)

I would contact the police about that.

I had something similar happen with a Facebook recruiter. I didn't reply to her first two emails so she started emailing my mom to try to get in touch with me. My mom called me because she thought it was a phishing email. I had never had that happen before.

I have started invoicing companies for wasting my time and also threatening them with CAN-SPAM complaints for failing to include an opt-out, an actual mailing address, etc.

Then, when my invoice isn’t paid, I threaten collections on them personally and the company. Usually that solves it. Then I’m “such a dick” but highly effective in recovering my time.

Please make this into an automated business.

Wait, have any companies actually paid you?!

Please answer OP

That's a great approach and I'd also be curious to know if somebody has paid you, my immediate guess would be "no" - but you never know

Just keep scheduling a time that works, and then don't show up.

Man I bet you could write a really dumb script that automates it too.

Make sure you include a logger in that script to catch any anomalies

Back in the days when this kind of thing happened on the telephone, the SERIOUSLY passive aggressive trick was to talk to them, and then hang up on yourself. Repeatedly.

"Hi this is Arnie from CHewemup'n'Spitemout Staffing, is this Bob?"

"Hey Arnie, what perfect timing! I just started looking for a new opportunity, and I'm really excited to— CLICK."

Ring ring.

"This is Arnie, we seem to have been cut off."

"Oh Arnie, right, thought you hung up on me."

"No, not me, must be a bad connection. You were saying?"

"Yes, I was saying this is a great time to talk about opportunities. I just finished a major Java Enterprise JavaBeans project, and I'm— CLICK."

Lather, rinse, repeat, as the meme used to go before we called them memes.

oh man, that's great-- you could probably get through a LOTT more CLICKs before they get the point. what a great use of human psychology-- they assume you have good intentions because you called them... it's a bit devious, but i'm gonna have to add that one to the toolbox hahaha.

Jolly Roger telephone company is another fun choice. At ~$20 /yr seems not terrible for a bit of fun.

https://jollyrogertelephone.com/

I also will give out the number to local strip clubs for sales people which seems to be confusing to them.

I reported them to the FTC. No idea if it did anything but they never called back.

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