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Comment by chmod775 | Hacker News Reader

If they don't take the polite "no", immediately reach for insults. People who intentionally annoy you don't deserve civility - they're not showing any themselves.

My personal favorites is along the lines of: "Are you hard of hearing, you stupid clown?" - no overly foul language and safe to use in most company.

Few will try selling stuff to someone hurling nothing but insults at them. There's really only one group of people this doesn't work on, and they're the bottom of the barrel trying to find victims on public transport and the like. If you figure out a way to reliably get rid of them, let me know!

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Funnily enough, this reminds me of my Dad's approach years back. After he said no and they'd start again, he'd say "oh sorry, are ya deaf or dumb, boy?" in a way you couldn't tell if he was joking or not.

They'd usually be speechless or say 'neither', and he'd explain that he already said no, so they must either be hard of hearing or their brain's not processing it. Always caught them off guard. I don't remember if it was effective or not in getting them to go away, oddly enough.

I'm 6'4" and decently fit, but I wouldn't go around calling other men stupid clowns.

I worked in car sales for a decade and a decent 10%+ of salespeople IMO would get aggressive to your face over that.

Or do you only say that to the non criminal looking ones?

Indeed. Even if this worked 95% of the time, that 5% where it escalates things just isn't worth it IMO. Also, pissing people off that know where you live isn't a great idea.

It's basically WarGames. The only winning move is not to play. I don't answer the door when I'm certain it's a salesman. I don't make eye contact/respond to the ones that are setup outside of a store. Same with the ones setup in malls/stores (looking at you, Costco).

Read the room and maybe don't do it to that unhinged looking guy from the subway.

Personally I enjoy a bit of excitement, but most people don't want confrontation, which is why appearing confrontational before they're committed works for making them do a u-turn quickly.

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