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From: ace@lever.com (Tom Ace)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: What Is This World Coming To?
Message-ID: <12579@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 24 Sep 90 18:01:58 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 677, Message 2 of 9


In TELECOM Digest issue 666, judice@sulaco.enet.dec.com (Lou Judice)
writes:

>   ...  What
>is the point of putting bizzare messages on your answering machine to
>mislead some hapless telemarketing representative, when as Patrick
>states, A POLITE NO THANK YOU WILL DO!

Hapless telemarketing executive?  No one is forced to take such a job.
Telemarketers know they are calling people they don't know, who might
be asleep, ill, eating, or otherwise occupied and who would rather
only be receiving calls from people they want to hear from.

>What exactly is this world coming to when we can no longer talk to
>strangers...?

The same place it has come to where telemarketers have lost a sense of
what is courteous.  It is the rare telemarketer who has asked me a
question like "is this a good time to talk?".  If someone wants to
sell me something, they can send me mail which I can peruse at leisure
and give all the attention I determine it deserves.

Also, the general topic of "talking to strangers" has little to do
with the vast majority of unsolicited phone calls.  Strangers call me
to sell me things, to take surveys, to solicit donations, and (about
once a month) to ask me to subscribe to the {San Francisco Chronicle}.
Only once has a stranger ever called me for the purpose of initiating
a friendly personal conversation -- and even though he called at 1 A.M.,
I talked to him for two hours.


Tom Ace
{sun,pyramid}!hoptoad!lever!ace