How To Deal With Unsolicited Annoyances

[rostasi]

Found this online...many of you may know some of these already.

Do you have a special creative way of dealing with such things?

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      Three Little Words That Work !!

(1)The three little words are: "Hold On, Please..."

Saying this, while putting down your phone and walking off (instead

of hanging-up immediately) would make each telemarketing call so much

more time-consuming that boiler room sales would grind to a halt.

Then when you eventually hear the phone company's "beep-beep-beep"

tone, you know it's time to go back and hang up your handset, which

has efficiently completed its task.

These three little words will help eliminate telephone soliciting.

(2) Do you ever get those annoying phone calls with no one on the

other end?

This is a telemarketing technique where a machine makes phone calls

and records the time of day when a person answers the phone.

This technique is used to determine the best time of day for a "real"

sales person to call back and get someone at home.

What you can do after answering, if you notice there is no one there,

is to immediately start hitting your # button on the phone, 6 or 7

times, as quickly as possible. This confuses the machine that dialed

the call and it kicks your number out of their system. Gosh, what a

shame not to have your name in their system any longer !!!

(3) Junk Mail Help:

When you get "ads" enclosed with your phone or utility bill, return

these "ads" with your payment. Let the sending companies throw their

own junk mail away.

When you get those "pre-approved" letters in the mail for everything

from credit cards to 2nd mortgages and similar type junk, do not

throw away the return envelope

Most of these come with postage-paid return envelopes, right?

It costs them more than the regular 37 cents postage "IF" and when

they receive them back.

It costs them nothing if you throw them away! The postage was around

50 cents before! the last increase and it is according to the weight.

In that case, why not get rid of some of your other junk mail and put

it in these cool little, postage-paid return envelopes.

One of Andy Rooney's (60 minutes) ideas.

Send an ad for your local chimney cleaner to American Express. Send a

pizza coupon to Citibank. If you didn't get anything else that day,

then just send them their blank application back!

If you want to remain anonymous, just make sure your name isn't on

anything you send them.

You can even send the envelope back empty if you want to just to keep

them guessing! It still costs them 37 cents.

The banks and credit card companies are currently getting a lot of

their own junk back in the mail, but folks, we need to OVERWHELM

them. Let's let them know what it's like to get lots of junk mail,

and best of all they're paying for it...Twice!

Let's help keep our postal service busy since they are saying that

e-mail is cutting into their business profits, and that's why they

need to increase postage costs again. You get the idea!

If enough people follow these tips, it will work---- I have been

doing this for years, and I get very little junk mail anymore.

[Randy Twizzle]

I've actually begun to enjoy those rare occasions when I get an unsolicited phone call. It's allows me to display a snarling, anti-social, tough guy persona which I'm not able to do during the rest of my waking hours. I can be as nasty as I want to be to the poor bastard on the other end, without suffering any consequences.

[Michael Fitzgerald]

Not one but TWO recent articles (plus some letters) in the New York Times on this very subject:

===============================

When Seth Shepsle goes to Starbucks, he orders a ''medium'' because ''grande'' -- as the coffee company calls the size, the one between big and small -- annoys him.

Meg Daniel presses zero whenever she hears a computerized operator on the telephone so that she can talk to a real person. ''Just because they want a computer to handle me doesn't mean I have to play along,'' she said.

When subscription cards fall from magazines Andrew Kirk is reading, he stacks them in a pile at the corner of his desk. At the end of each month, he puts them in the mail but leaves them blank so that the advertiser is forced to pay the business reply postage without gaining a new subscriber.

Life can involve big hardships, like being fired or smashing up your car. There is only so much you can do about them. But far more prevalent -- and perhaps in the long run just as insidious -- are life's many little annoyances.

These, you can do something about.

To examine the little weapons people use for everyday survival is to be given a free guidebook on getting by, created by the millions who feel that they must. It is a case study in human inventiveness, with occasional juvenile and petty passages, and the originators of these tips are happy to share them.

''They're an integral part of how people cope,'' said Prof. James C. Scott, who teaches anthropology and political science at Yale University, and the author of ''Weapons of the Weak,'' about the feigned ignorance, foot-dragging and other techniques Malaysian peasants used to avoid cooperating with the arrival of new technology in the 1970's. ''All societies have them, but they're successful only to the extent that they avoid open confrontation.''

The slow driver in fast traffic, the shopper with 50 coupons at the front of the checkout line and the telemarketer calling at dinner all inflict life's thousand little lashes. But some see these infractions as precious opportunities, rare chances for retribution in the face of forces beyond our control.

Wesley A. Williams spent more than a year exacting his revenge against junk mailers. When signing up for a no-junk-mail list failed to stem the flow, he resorted to writing at the top of each unwanted item: ''Not at this address. Return to sender.'' But the mail kept coming because the envelopes had ''or current resident'' on them, obligating mail carriers to deliver it, he said.

Next, he began stuffing the mail back into the ''business reply'' envelope and sending it back so that the mailer would have to pay the postage. ''That wasn't exacting a heavy enough cost from them for bothering me,'' said Mr. Williams, 35, a middle school science teacher who lives in Melrose, N.Y., near Albany.

After checking with a postal clerk about the legality of stepping up his efforts, he began cutting up magazines, heavy bond paper, and small strips of sheet metal and stuffing them into the business reply envelopes that came with the junk packages.

''You wouldn't believe how heavy I got some of these envelopes to weigh,'' said Mr. Williams, who added that he saw an immediate drop in the amount of arriving junk mail. A spokesman for the United States Postal Service, Gerald McKiernan, said that Mr. Williams's actions sounded legal, as long as the envelope was properly sealed.

Sometimes, small acts of rebellion offer big doses of relief.

''I've come to realize that I'm almost addicted to the sick little pleasure I get from lashing out at these things,'' said Mr. Kirk, 24, a freelance writer from Brooklyn who collects and returns magazine inserts.

When ordering a pizza from Domino's, Mr. Kirk says he always requests a ''small,'' knowing that he will be corrected and told that medium is the smallest available size. ''It makes me feel better to point out that their word games aren't fooling anyone,'' he said.

The Internet offers a booming trade to help with this type of annoyance-fighting behavior. For example, shared passwords to free Web sites are available at www.bugmenot.com to help people avoid dealing with long registration forms. To coexist with loud cellphone talkers, the Web offers hand-held jammers that, although illegal in the United States, can block all signals within a 45-foot radius.

Mitch Altman, a 48-year old inventor living in San Francisco, said that in the last three months he has sold about 30,000 of his key-chain-size zappers called TV-B-Gone, which can be used discreetly to switch off televisions in public places. ''When you go to a restaurant to talk with friends, why should you have to deal with the distraction of a ceiling-mounted television?'' Mr. Altman said.

Some Web sites specialize in arming people against online annoyances. The site www.slashdot.org posted the name and the mailing address of one of the worst known spammers, encouraging people to sign the spammer up for catalogs and other junk mail to be sent to the spammer's home. Mr. McKiernan of the Postal Service said that this tactic also appeared to be legal, but might constitute harassment.

Some groups are more frustrated than others. In 2002, Harris Interactive, a market research group based in Rochester, conducted a phone survey called the Daily Hassle Scale that asked 1,010 people to rank the aggravations they faced in a typical day. The survey found that poor people and African-Americans suffer the most stress from the everyday annoyances such as noisy neighbors, telemarketers and pressure at work, but it did not explain why.

Sometimes, the resistance to these frustrations is organized.

Work slowdowns are methods commonly used by labor unions to apply pressure without actually striking. During the Solidarity movement in Poland, people expressed their disapproval of the government-run news media by taking a walk with their hats on backward at exactly 6 p.m. when the state news program started. When the government noticed the trend, it issued curfews, but people then put their televisions in their windows facing outward so that only the police walking the streets would see the broadcasts.

''You have to remember, in Poland during those years showing up drunk at work was seen as a patriotic act because people hated the bosses so much,'' Professor Scott said.

But even on less coordinated levels, shared frustration is often the augur of countercultural trends. Mr. Shepsle said he took great solace in discovering his irritations with Starbucks' lingo summed up on a popular T-shirt in Chicago. The shirt, which mocks the pretentiousness of a certain Chicago neighborhood, features two names. Next to Lincoln Park it says ''Tall, Grande, Venti.'' Next to Wicker Park it says ''Small, Medium, Large.''

''It's nice to know I'm not alone,'' said Mr. Shepsle, 28, who works for a theater company in Manhattan.

Most people participate in this sort of behavior on some level, Professor Scott said, adding that his own habit was to write ''England'' rather than ''United Kingdom'' on letters he sends to his British friends. He described this as his way of disregarding British claims to Wales and Scotland.

''As a tactic, it doesn't amount to much except a way to provide a tiny and private sense of satisfaction,'' he said. ''But that's something.''

[Photograph]

Wesley A. Williams, a teacher in Melrose, N.Y., weighs down junk mail that he returns to sender. He hopes it will cost mailers in postage due. (Photo by Stewart Cairns for The New York Times); Seth Shepsle, who works for a theater company in Manhattan, finds the lingo used to sell coffee at Starbucks tremendously irritating. He prefers a ''medium'' to the company's ''grande,'' and he always orders it that way. (Photo by Angel Franco/The New York Times); Why must small, medium and large be tall, grande and venti? (Photo by Angel Franco/The New York Times)(pg. B5); (pg. A1)

==================================

To the Editor:

Re ''No Need to Stew: A Few Tips to Cope With Life's Annoyances'' (front page, March 15):

It was interesting to learn some of the strategies people use to make their own personal statement against these annoyances.

In our family, when we receive a call from a telemarketer, it becomes another opportunity for creative role playing.

I've happily announced in my deepest voice, ''This is she,'' when someone from a credit card company asks for my wife.

My daughter enjoys the persona of an overly enthusiastic and talkative teenager.

Different accents are also fun to explore; we have been anything from a suspicious shut-in to a big-hearted Texas cattle rancher, whatever strikes us at the moment.

Although this is clearly at the expense of the hapless employees, we feel that it may even liven up their day as they methodically run through their call list.

Blake Rowe

Ossining, N.Y., March 15, 2005

To the Editor:

I find it humorous that most of the people quoted in ''No Need to Stew: A Few Tips to Cope With Life's Annoyances'' seem to actually have no life. If they did, they'd not be wasting it on such trivial and inane matters as what Starbucks calls its sizes. If it is really that annoying, shop somewhere else and stop being annoyed. What a concept!

I suspect that some people like being annoyed; otherwise they wouldn't have anything to complain about, and that is what truly makes them happy.

Matt Mizenko

San Francisco, March 15, 2005

To the Editor:

I was puzzled when I learned in ''No Need to Stew: A Few Tips to Cope With Life's Annoyances'' that a freelance writer is annoyed by subscription cards falling out of magazines. I've got news for him: They are the world's best bookmarks.

Jim Weis

Atlanta, March 15, 2005

To the Editor:

The March 18 letters commenting on ''No Need to Stew: A Few Tips to Cope With Life's Annoyances'' (front page, March 15) brought me back to my year as a telemarketer. It seemed that everyone, when he or she discovered my occupation, had a smug announcement of an oh-so-clever way of dispatching people like me.

Sorry, folks, but we've heard them all before. Yes, we know you pretend to be your wife. Yes, we've heard the one about how much are we willing to pay for your time. Yes, we do always call at dinner (when else are you at home?).

No, you're not entertaining us, and you're much less original than you think. Hang up or put yourself on the Do Not Call registry. Stop wasting our time and yours.

Josh Nugent

Amherst, Mass., March 18, 2005

===============================

As it turns out, frustration -- not necessity -- may be the true mother of invention.

An article that appeared in The New York Times last week about the things people do to deal with life's many little annoyances spurred a flood of responses from readers offering their own tactics.

While providing a telling look at the banal things that bother people, these reactions also shed light on the lengths people go to extract retribution for mundane infractions. But most of all, they revealed the creativity in passive aggression.

Dena Roslan was sick of a co-worker who kept helping himself to her lunch cookies. So Ms. Roslan, 30, a clothing designer who works in Manhattan, bought a bag of dog biscuits that looked like biscotti. ''My only remorse was not being able to see his face after he ate the bait,'' she said.

Stewart Dean said he despised the scripted questions people ask at the end of service phone calls.

''It's especially galling when they ask, 'Is there anything else we can do to make you completely satisfied?' and they haven't even solved the problem you called about,'' said Mr. Dean, 57, a computer administrator for Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. So he said he routinely makes requests that the person on the phone cannot possibly fulfill. ''I usually respond: 'Sure. Would you please get Bush out of the White House?'''

To be annoyed is to be human, and while many people cope with small frustrations by ignoring them, odd things do get to people.

''It just doesn't make any sense,'' said Janine Papp, 30, a grant writer who works for a nonprofit group in Manhattan. She is annoyed that the smallest popcorn size at her nearby theater is called ''child-size.''

''I'm an adult, so why should I have to ask for a child's item?'' Ms. Papp said. ''If I order a 'small,' I'll be getting a medium-size bag, so I just ask for the 'smallest possible bag' of popcorn.''

Every time he eats at a fast-food restaurant, Mitchell Jacobs is reminded of how much he dislikes the expectation that he will bus his own table. ''Doesn't McDonald's make enough money? Come on, Ronald, hire some people to clean the tables,'' said Mr. Jacobs, 70, a retired businessman from Manhattan, adding that he now just leaves his trash at the table.

For many, the simple goal is to give adversaries a taste their own medicine.

Tony Manzo takes his stand at the local video store. ''I always say, 'Hello, how are you today, sir?' in the most monotone voice I can muster,'' said Mr. Manzo, 29, a writer from San Francisco. ''The point is to pre-empt the bored and slovenly teenager behind the counter before he mumbles the words to me. It's a way to show him just how annoying his soggy monotone refrain is for us to hear on the other side of the counter.''

When subscription cards fall out of Chris Marzuk's magazines, he fills them in with the addresses of the senders. ''That way Time magazine can pay the return postage and also get plenty of subscriptions to Time magazine,'' wrote Mr. Marzuk, 54, a school administrator from Greenlawn, N.Y.

Telemarketers may provoke the angriest reactions. Some people put them on hold and never return to the phone. Others say they put their toddlers on the phone, encouraging them to babble until the caller succumbs. But the most common tactic is avoidance.

Although Carol Lydon, 38, of Philadelphia has a day job as a paralegal, she tells telemarketers who call at night that she is running out to work. ''I'm also never over 18 when they ask to speak with someone over the age of 18, and I'm always the housekeeper if they ask if I'm authorized to make decisions regarding phone service, cable television service,'' she added.

Others take their small acts of rebellion a step further.

Dawn Quiett said she had changed her voting habits in reaction to unsolicited calls from campaigners. Ms. Quiett, a 35-year-old publicist from Dallas, said that during the last presidential race she received so many calls from pollsters and party officials that she began telling them she would not vote for any candidate who used telemarketers.

Of course, some people go overboard.

Having worked in the past for several small direct-mail marketers, Donna Rothkopf of Astoria, Queens, said that envelopes often came back with everything from used condoms to giant cockroaches in them.

''The truly hostile respondent used more sinister weapons of retribution, like the top of an aluminum can, a razor blade, or a handful of broken glass,'' she said. ''These are Pyrrhic victories that fail to influence the way of doing business, but succeed in bringing harm to an innocent cog.''

[Photograph]

Dena Roslan, sick of a co-worker who helped himself to her lunch cookies, retaliated by baiting him with biscotti-style dog biscuits. (Photo by Marko Georgiev for The New York Times)

=========================

Mike

[Dan Gould]

Thanks for including the NYT pieces, Mike. I caught the first article but not the follow-ups.

[Son-of-a-Weizen]

Never answer the phone unless you hear who it is on the machine....works 100% of the time.

[Dan Gould]

Never answer the phone unless you hear who it is on the machine....works 100% of the time.

Unless you use the voicemail service from the phone company and don't actually have a machine.

[rostasi]

Thanks Mike for this - lots of stuff to chew on.

Not sure if this fits, but the other day while at the grocers,

I had bought a medium number of items. When I asked the

bagger if I could have it double-bagged

(due to a couple of medium-heavy half-gallon items),

she got all huffy and then told me that they were low on bags.

I said "OK." She finished by putting everything in two half filled bags.

I asked her what the difference was and she couldn't answer.

So, I made her take all of them out of the bags and double-bag it

like I asked for in the first place. She was not a happy camper.

[Quincy]

Before the do not call registry, I viewed any telemarketer call as a chance to do as I pleased to the person on the other end. Outside of pollsters I just have little sympathy for people who find themselves employed in a job where they know they are annoying people.

I used to get calls from auto glass repair places asking if I had a cracked windshield. One time I said "Let me go look" and left the phone on the desk and didn't return. After more than 10 minutes they finally hung up. I was pretty proud of myself until they called back the next day saying that I had a cracked windshield. "Um, no. Please take me off your call list."

I like the tip about the hitting the pound sign repeatedly for those mysterious calls where no one is on the other end.

I've gone through periods of sending back the postage paid envelopes, especially from credit card companies or dubious investment newsletters. Sometimes I fill them full of confetti, other times I'll write a word on piece of scratch paper and include the love note inside. It can be anything from "balls" to "bananas," anything to entertain the grunt opening the letter. If the company prints my name or a barcode on the envelope then I definitely send it back full of junk, I just take the trouble to remove the barcode or name. I've also added the addresses of one junk mailer into the address of another along with made up goofy names.

I haven't practiced any of these more time consuming tricks for several months btw. Guess I'm feeling less peeved lately.

I think Abbie Hoffman used to claim that the thing to do was to attach the postage paid letter to a brick, but apparently that's over the top. I've been tempted a few times, but instead in those moments of aggravation just pack the envelope as full as I can. Hmm, sheet metal eh?

[tonym]

I was among the audience last year at a childcare conference in which the speaker, a handwriting expert' suggested to parents and carers that ambitious pre-schoolers sould be allowed to doodle and dawb their way through all your junk mail and inserted back into the pre-paid envelopes for the company's perusal.

It's a practice that I heartily endorse .

[Jazzmoose]

Ignore this thread, Conn! This is where we came in!

(Sorry, guys; a little joke...just remembering a similar thread on the BNBB that got us sending uh...'interesting' PMs back and forth for a while...)

[Jazz Kat]

: Just a quickie,

on aol, pushing the 'report spam' button. How many times out of the times you hit, do you think the spam is actually read, and taken care of?

[Jazzmoose]

Almost as often as the elevator door closes faster when you push the 'close door' button?

[Jazz Kat]

Or when you push that button to make the light turn red..

[chris olivarez]

There is a lot to chew on here. Thanks for the information.

[John Tapscott]

All these ideas are great. I especially like the way of dealing with the junk mail.

I kind of feel sorry for the people who HAVE to work for call centers. The callers are under enormous pressure and the turnover rate is incredibly high. My sister-in-law worked for a call center for a while. She said not to worry about being rude when you're called. They don't care. In fact, she said the caller would much rather have people hang up immediately or be rude right off the top, rather than the caller going through the whole sales pitch and then having someone say "No," at the end.

I'm really annoyed when my own bank calls me offering some new product or service and offering to charge the "low monthy fee" to my credit card "for my convenience. " I can't even call my local branch anymore which is 2 blocks away (all calls are taken by someone 1,000 miles away) , but they can always find me.

[Free For All]

She said not to worry about being rude when you're called. They don't care. In fact, she said the caller would much rather have people hang up immediately or be rude right off the top, rather than the caller going through the whole sales pitch and then having someone say "No," at the end. 

That's good to know. I used to feel bad about being rude to someone who's just doing their job, probably for minimum pay, and I used to wait until they paused for a response to say no, but now I just interrupt and say "no thanks" and hang up.

Screening calls is the main reason we keep an answering machine- worth its weight in gold, as is caller ID.

[7/4]

In fact, she said the caller would much rather have people hang up immediately or be rude right off the top, rather than the caller going through the whole sales pitch and then having someone say "No," at the end.

That was my old MO before I joined the National Do Not Call Registry

[7/4]

As for spam, I use Mozilla to tag spam and route it to the trash.

[Rooster_Ties]

Link: I need to know that important piece of information, and you're not giving it to me.

[Michael Fitzgerald]

That requires a "do not listen while enjoying any type of liquid beverage" warning.

Mike

[Rooster_Ties]

Lots more of the same: http://www.jimflorentine.com/download.htm

Edited March 28, 2005 by Rooster_Ties

[Jazz Kat]

phone marceter=pm

me=me

pm-"would you like to switch to Verison Wireless?"

me="um tell you what, just leave me your home phone number and i'll get back to you later."

pm="umm i can't do that."

me="oh, you probaly don't like to be bothered at home."

pm="right."

me="well now you know how I feel."

hang up.

[Dan Gould]

Uh, was that you or JERRY SEINFELD?

I think we know the answer.

[Jazz Kat]

Umm yeah, I thought it would be understood.

hence the

[Free For All]

From Seinfeld:

Telemarketer: Hi. Would you be interested in switching over to TMI Long Distance service?

Seinfeld: Oh, gee, I can’t talk right now. Why don’t you give me your home number and I’ll call you later.

Telemarketer: Uh, sorry, we’re not allowed to do that.

Seinfeld: Oh, I guess you don’t want people calling you at home.

Telemarketer: No.

Seinfeld: Well, now you know how I feel.

Busted!

No soup for you........NEXT!!!