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Comment by marcuskane2 | Hacker News Reader

:wave:

Hey, the rest of the thread is over here. It looks like you moved the goalposts so far away you might be lost.

Not really, it's exactly my point. If you're a game collector and I show up with a game at a good price, that's a sale. If I pull into your driveway with the classic car you're looking for the sale is on the table. The sign means nothing, what matters is what you've got and how much it'll cost.

Those are very niche. How would you have known that's what I'm looking for? Sounds like groundwork for a larger crime. I'll say I'm busy but take your name and number and later do OSINT research on you to level the playing field. Why would I engage someone who knows where my family sleeps when I don't know where theirs sleeps?

Successful cold callers research their customers beforehand to know what they want, and don't call people who probably aren't interested.

If you're a game collector and I show up with a rare game, you're probably interested. Even if you don't buy it, at least I'm not wasting your time. If I show up with an Ethernet switch ASIC, you're probably not interested and I am wasting your time. That's why Marvell would cold-call Juniper and Cisco, not Antonio Romero Monteiro.

Turns out I've never in my life had a successful cold caller reach out to me, I guess. I can't think of a single reason in 2024 that a random telephone call would get me to part ways with my money. In fact, I've had very few instances where a salesperson adds value to a transaction period.

Showing up on my doorstep uninvited is at best an invasion of privacy, and at worst a crime in progress that I interrupted.

So you don't want a free pizza because the neighbour's 3 year old son ordered 30 of them on doordash and their freezer isn't big enough?

Definitely not, but I like my neighbors and like maintaining good relations with people in the nighrborhood, so I would forgive them.

You know, I thought about this overnight. I'm pretty sure I feel this way partially because talking to people real time isn't free for me, it has a cost. I have to mask neurodivergence all day to get along in the corporate world, I do not want to put the mask on again unexpectedly when there's a knock at the door. It's my off time, it's like getting paged or something.

The second part is the privacy aspect, I don't want to do business in a power asymmetry -- they can reach me where I sleep but I cannot do the same to them. I don't want anyone I engage in a business relationship with to get any ideas of any type about who/what they see at my home, from judging negatively to jealously to planning to come back and take it. It's unnecessary risk surface for a business transaction.

All this person has done is illustrate a sociopathic inability to understand other peoples’ experiences. Nothing they have said is remotely interesting and is an obvious no from my perspective. The only situation I’d even pick up a phone or answer the door is the neighbor. That would be a no thanks. The fact that they keep pushing and clearly think their juvenile worldview applies to everyone reinforces my original statement. It’s wild to me people can say these things with a straight face.

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