Having Fun with Spam Callers

Let me preface this post with the disclaimer that I do not necessarily advocate such actions, no matter how much fun they can be.

This one is a bit different from my previous posts and I have to credit one of my softball teammates for inspiring it – thanks JS! – as it was listening in, and participating, when he kept a pollster on the phone for over 15 minutes that gave me the idea. I’ll get to more on that later.

Now that you are home, whether working from home or in retirement, your phone no doubt rings several times a day with spam calls. It’s election season so the pollsters are out like mosquitos at dusk, and it’s also fundraising season so the real and scam calls are abundant. All that in addition to the robo-calls that plague us. Too bad we can’t mess with those calls to see if we can make smoke come out of the robot’s head. While I don’t mess with, or recommend messing with real fundraisers (and please don’t be rude to them, they are just doing their jobs), messing with the scammers and pollsters can be an amusing alternative to getting annoyed by the calls.

That brings me back to the call that inspired this post. We were at our team sponsor’s pub when my teammate got a call from a pollster. He immediately jumped into banter with the caller, starting by saying that he was on a work assignment in Hong Kong, but he would be happy to participate in the phone survey. He smoothly sucked the caller into a conversation ranging from the actual poll questions – for which we supplied ridiculous answers – to the 12-hour time difference and the fact that he was having breakfast while on the call. He even asked the caller about his/her breakfast preferences (“Do you like pancakes?” “That’s what I’m having for breakfast” “Hold on a sec, I have to order more”). His banter was so relaxed and his cadence so swift that he took total control of the conversation. We were doubled over with laughter at our table as we listened, and timed, the call. It was a privilege to witness such a performance and I would have loved to have been able to see the caller throughout the episode.

So as the spam calls increase over the next few weeks maybe there’s an opportunity to have a little fun or even to let the nearest toddler handle the call.

Enjoy the upcoming Labor Day weekend!