Woman fined for blowing whistle into phone

Whistle A German woman, annoyed by telemarketers who called her frequently, blew a whistle into the phone to discourage further calls. The telemarketer who received the blast claims to have suffered hearing problems, and now the whistle blower has a criminal record and an €800 fine to pay. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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http://www.facebook.com/xgoodvibesx David Catt

Good. People who think it’s acceptable to cause potentially permanent damage to someone who’s just doing a job to make some money (ever met anyone who wanted to be a telemarketer?) need their perceptions altered. Harshly.

Can you tell I used to be one? :p
- http://twitter.com/alex4pt alex w
  
  The onus is on your employer to provide you with a safe workplace.
  
  That means providing you with equipment that can detect a ‘squeal’, whether it’s a fax machine or a cranky kraut with a whistle, and limit the output of your headset before it can do any lasting damage to your hearing.Old bakelite handsets that go ‘clunk’ when Grammy hangs up, co-workers celebrating a birthday in the next cubicle, it all adds up. Hearing loss isn’t something that happens at once — it happens over time.
  
  My current telco is pranking me twice a day because they know my phone contract is nearly up, and they want to tie me into another contract.
  
  By ‘suggesting’ I call them back (to work out who’s calling) I void any ‘cooling-off’ period they would be bound to had I been able to answer their call in the first place. Not cool.
  
  I am seeing this from both sides. I ‘am one’ too. All’s fair in love and war.
  - fuzzyfuzzyfungus
    
    I’d have to agree that this seems like an occupational safety/negligence case, not an assault-style one.
    
    The input received by any reasonably contemporary(at least post-transistorization if not earlier) handset is pretty much just a suggestion to the drive circuit of the output speaker. If you are running a call center with phone gear that will spike to volumes immediately damaging to human hearing, you are Doing It Wrong, and Negligently(numbers seem to vary a bit, but for immediate damage you are talking the range more typically achieved by lighter small arms…)
    
    It would still be perfectly possible to harass, annoy, vex, upset, etc. the phone operator with suitably chosen shock noises(shrill whistles would still be annoying, faking medical emergencies likely still bad for their blood pressure, etc); but there is no way to control the peak volume of a remote handset.
    - chgoliz
      
      The problem — as everyone knows — is that you can’t successfully sue the a*holes who own a telemarketing company. Better to go after their victims instead. Pitting victim against victim while they get to go on making money and harassing people: it’s a win-win, right?
    - bcsizemo
      
      And given the fact a great deal of telemarketers use VOIP it’s all straight digital anyway. It’s not like it is that hard to code the software to hard limit the output volume (or normalize all output to a similar volume.)
    - travtastic
      
      At least in the US there are specific OSHA guidelines for this kind of thing, based on decibel level and daily accumulated exposure. If the phone is capable of causing instant hearing damage, I believe that she would have been legally required to wear ear muffs while using it.
      - http://glitch.tl/ Michael Smith
        
        One control room environment where I worked had an off hook tone from the PABX which caused a lot of problems for operators who used headphones.
  - RedShirt77
    
    What if this was a door knock? Does the emmployee need Armor?
    - Ryan Lenethen
      
      I guess that depends if the armor covers the face or not.
- foobar
  
  People who think it’s ok to spam the phone system need their perceptions altered. Harshly.
- hymenopterid
  
  I appreciate that telemarketing is a thankless job, but it’s thankless for a reason. The fact that someone else is paying you to do it does not entitle you to bother people.
- Brian Boyko
  
  Hold on.
  
  Last I checked, telephones had devices you could use to control the VOLUME. Why was the prosecution not against whatever device allowed for ear-damaging decibel levels to come out of the receiving end of the phone anyway/
  - ocker3
    
    Volume controls on that kind of gear are often only multipliers, they don’t actually set upper limits on output, at least in my experience. I worked in an in-bound tech support centre, people Wanted to talk to me, but an inadvertant signal input (handset gets dropped, etc) can spike the noise levels.
SomeGuyNamedMark

At our home we just say “Please take me off your list”. No need to blow the eardrum out of some poor working stiff.
- http://ae4rv.com/ royaltrux
  
  How’s that working out for you?
  - WillieNelsonMandela
    
    The “take me off your list” approach has worked fine for me.
    - Ms. Anne Thrope
      
      Now if it would only work to get the politicians and fundraisers from calling.
  - SomeGuyNamedMark
    
    Works fine actually. We don’t get 2nd calls.
    - http://jere7my.livejournal.com jere7my
      
      Works fine actually. We don’t get 2nd calls.
      
      I take it you’re not on the “Julie from Cardmember Services” calling list then. Once they start calling you, they’ll call every day, for months at a time. Requests to be taken off their list are met with profanity or hangups. They call from spoofed numbers and refuse to give a call-back number, so they’re very difficult to report. Give ‘em a Google: [cardmember services scam].
      - chgoliz
        
        Yup.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        Who gets live people? I get recordings demanding that I push a button to speak to a representative about something that they haven’t even stated yet.
      - Martijn
        
        Those people sound like a valid target for air horns and whistles.
- Vickie Kostecki
  
  We say the same thing at my house too. Does nothing.
  - http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
    
    If you’re in the uk that’s illegal. Forget who you report them to though.
    - chgoliz
      
      It’s illegal in the US as well.
      
      When you tell them they’re being reported, they often get really abusive. The best you can hope for is an immediate hang-up.
      There are lots of jobs in customer service where the customer calls in and WANTS to talk to a company rep. That’s not what these scammers do.
      - http://twitter.com/sqlrob Rob
        
        No it’s not illegal in the US.
        
        “Take me off your list” – they can do what they want.
        
        “Put me on your do not call list” – THAT they have to obey.
      - jenjen
        
        As Rob says, it’s the magic words “put me on your do not call list” that work. IF it’s really a telemarketer doing a straight sales call. Polls don’t have to obey, and a lot of political calls use this to get around the rules. Also a company can call you if they already have a relationship with you, like if you filled out a lead form or you bought something from them before.
      - http://twitter.com/sqlrob Rob
        
        @jenjen I think even companies you do business with have to honor your request not to call. They don’t have to obey the national DNC if you’re on it, but if you request they’re still bound.
      - jellyfishattack
        
        In Canada you can register your phone numbers on the national do not call list via the internet, but any charity, political party, or any company you do business with can still call you, as well as the vast majority of telemarketers/scammers who don’t care about the do not call list. You can’t prevent junk mail.
    - Beanolini
      
      If you’re in the uk that’s illegal. Forget who you report them to though.
      
      I don’t know either. But I do know that you can register with TPS to stop cold calls (and MPS for junk mail). It’s worked very well for me. Register your friends too!
      - http://darkmobius.com Andrew Molloy
        
        In the UK you can report them directly to Information Commissioner’s Office.
- chaopoiesis
  
  Here’s an alt approach with the Gandhi seal of approval: pick up phone; say “Hello” (or whatever you like to say); telemarketer launches their spiel (which tends to be a long monolog); simply set your phone down and go do something else for a while; a few minutes later, retrieve your phone and hang up.
  
  This affects the telemarketers at the business level: for them time is money, so waste their time. If enough people did this, their overhead would increase significantly. Whether it would be enough to put them out of business is an open question.
  - http://profiles.google.com/robertbos Rob Bos
    
    I think it’s reasonable to FIRST say “please put me on your ‘do not call’ list”, and then if they go “but wait” or whatever, then quietly put down the phone and come back later. Then you’re not wasting the time of non-assholes.
http://xuth.net Xuth

The phone system can only transmit a relatively small range of volume. If this was a direct cause of hearing problems then the volume was turned up too high on the telemarketers headset.
Navin_Johnson

Don’t they have something like a “Do not call list”?

I’d have to say I’d be surprised that America, with its: consumer protection = socialism attitude, would have a way to deal with this, while Germany would not.
- foobar
  
  The Do Not Call list is just a convenient source of numbers for any telemarketer outside its jurisdiction.
  - Navin_Johnson
    
    I signed up for it immediately when it became an option, and I don’t get telemarketing calls at all. Wrong numbers, political / election calls, sure, but they’re not covered.
    
    Could some of the complainers have been too lazy to sign up?
- Ipo
  
  I’m on that. It helps somewhat.
  The calls I do receive are originating in Turkish Northern Cyprus, outside the EU.
  Lawless.
  I demand whistleblower protection!
  I’m considering a foghorn.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Don’t they have something like a “Do not call list”?
  
  It doesn’t apply to lenders or charities like the Police Benevolent Blahblahblah because they’re not trying to sell you anything according to the rules. I get more than 30 calls per week, completely unencumbered by DNC regulations.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001683215973 John Green

xuth exactly they shouldnt be calling people randomly … i tell them im recording the call and ask where they got my info 99% of the time they will then hang up
- ocker3
  
  Nice, my mobile (currently broken *sob*) does this, but what telemarketer calls a mobile? There Are handsets (just a tape cassette inside a fatter handset) that do this, however here in Australia (last I checked) it’s illegal to record without telling the other person
  - dainel
    
    Just say that you’re recording them. Nevermind whether you’re actually recording them, or even have the equipment to record. It isn’t illegal to not record when you’ve told them that you’re recording. This probably holds in every jurisdiction on earth. :)
Jason Baker

That blows.

(sorry)
http://www.facebook.com/fluffypinkblonde Kerstee ʚϊɞ Holden

That is unreal. I remember when this was THE recommended way to deal with pest callers. The world is UPSIDE DOWN when an uninvited caller can sue for what happens when the phone gets picked up. Next it’ll be charged for wasting an employee’s time when you let them talk and just put the phone on the side till they go away.
- Thad Boyd
  
  “The world is UPSIDE DOWN when an uninvited caller can sue for what happens when the phone gets picked up.”
  
  Well, bullshit. An uninvited call may be irritating, but it is not license to do whatever the fuck you want.
  
  I don’t like people coming to the door trying to sell me religion, but I’m not going to answer the door brandishing a knife at them.
  
  Even if you don’t buy the claim that the telemarketer suffered hearing loss (and I’ll agree I’m skeptical on that part myself), there’s a clear case here that the woman was attempting to inflict bodily harm. That’s a pretty disproportionate response for someone just trying to make a living.
  
  (I might be a little more sympathetic if she’d blown the whistle at someone making creepy prank phone calls or the like. But taking out your frustration with a COMPANY at the lowest-level grunts who work there does not impress me very much.)
  - Donald Petersen
    
    there’s a clear case here that the woman was attempting to inflict bodily harm.
    
    Nah, that’s not clear at all. Sounds more like she was trying to serve an equal measure of annoyance. There’s no indication the woman realized that her action might cause any lasting damage. A headset operated at an appropriate volume level isn’t going to hurt anyone.
    
    I’ve had to work a few crap jobs to make ends meet, but if the only job I could land in order to feed my kids was as this kind of Professional Irritant, I would expect this kind of treatment on every sixth call at least.
  - Finnagain
    
    No, there isn’t.
    
    there’s a clear case here that the woman was attempting to inflict bodily harm.
  - James Penrose
    
    ”Well, bullshit. An uninvited call may be irritating, but it is not license to do whatever the fuck you want.”
    
    Why not? Once you have established the caller has no legitimate business (as defined by you) and is wasting your time, I think a whistle in their ear is just repayment for the time they have stolen from you.
    
    I pay for a phone and related service as a convenience to me, not to total strangers who wish to use the excuse that they are just trying to make a buck. Drug dealers, pickpoickets and hookers use that line too but I do not welcome them into my home either.
    
    You don’t want the risk of a whistle in your ear? Don’t call random strangers to try and sell them stuff.
  - RedShirt77
    
    agreed!
  - donovan acree
    
    [quote] An uninvited call may be irritating, but it is not license to do whatever the fuck you want.[/quote]
    Sure it is. It’s my phone and it’s my number. Anyone who calls my number should have a reasonable expectation that I will respond in any manner I choose.
    I may discharge a firearm, let you listen to me having sex, take a crap on the receiver, blow a whistle, create a feedback loop, who knows? I can get creative.
    If you do not like the way I answer the phone, don’t call me. The German courts got this one wrong.
- Navin_Johnson
  
  I hope I don’t ever accidentally misdial a friends number and get you. I like my hearing, and I really love music.
- http://glitch.tl/ Michael Smith
  
  Not my problem if the sound they generated fed back from my speakers into the microphone.
No Imagination

She probably had asked them dozens of times not to call. In the US that gets you exactly nowhere. Telling them you’re on the “do not call” list gets you nowhere. Telling them they’re breaking the law by calling a cellphone gets you nowhere. Maybe the guy with “damaged” hearing is faking hearing loss to get the bucks. So much wrong with telemarketing, so little right.
- http://ae4rv.com/ royaltrux
  
  Unfortunately I can only like your comment once.
  I can not possibly imagine a noise transmitted over a telephone to be 1/3 as loud as many of the concerts I’ve attended.
  - Navin_Johnson
    
    There’s a difference between room noise and having a speaker (however small) pressed up against your eardrum.
    
    For example, I have seen the band you’re named after live before and that was not painful to my ears, yet I have a mother that is old enough to not understand that it is not necessary to yell into a cell phone to make yourself heard, and that is quite painful..
    - http://ae4rv.com/ royaltrux
      
      RTX didn’t hurt your ears??
      /kidding
      - Navin_Johnson
        
        RTX ♥
    - sdmikev
      
      Guess they shouldn’t have called here, then.
    - donovan acree
      
      Protip – Never press a speaker (however small) against your eardrum.
- RedShirt77
  
  Well many people don’t understand how no-call lists work. They do not apply to companies or organizations that have a relationship with you. If you have a magazine subscription there is nothing that prevents them for calling, similar with donations. And these laws are over ridden by the first amendment with regards to political campaigns. Some people assume because they are on a list they will never get another call and then are nasty morons to everyone that calls.
  - fuzzyfuzzyfungus
    
    Why would that be relevant? Yes, many people misunderstand the scope of DNC. However, not being on the list merely means that you aren’t legally forbidden from calling, not that anybody has to be nice to you when you do.
    - RedShirt77
      
      Only that her actions are probably not in any way justified by the idea that she is the victum of companies breaking the law themselves.
      
      You have a phone, people call you. You can be a good neighbor, an asshole, or get caller ID. This lady chose to be as big an asshole as her imagination allowed.
koko szanel

She wasnt fined for blowing that whistle, she was fined for what she told a Judge, intent to cause a harm.
alfanovember

It figures the Germans have high-fidelity 20-20KHz telephony while we Americans who invented the bloody thing are stuck with 300 – 3400 Hz. Say…. What frequency was the whistle, anyway?
- bcsizemo
  
  Seriously, she should have used an air horn.
petertrepan

Yet another example of authoritarian government cracking down on whistleblowers.
- MB44
  
  Agreed. Seems like the whole thing was blown completely out of proportion.
  - http://memoid.tumblr.com/ memoid
    
    You just got Cory’d! Any idea on how to shoehorn in a 3D printing reference or something about copyright?
    - MB44
      
      No way! You just got punned down.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        Thanks, it’s been a real trill.
pjk

People: Don’t be assholes.
- http://ae4rv.com/ royaltrux
  
  Exactly! Don’t start a company that profits from harassing people where they live.
  - http://rightcrafttool.blogspot.com/ Sign Ahead
    
    I agree, repeated phone calls from telemarketers are extremely frustrating. Like you said, they feel like a violation of your home and they build up a lot of resentment.
    
    But attacking the lowest-ranking, most powerless person at a company for decisions she did not make and could not revoke without losing her livlihood is not the way to change this. It’s akin to kicking your neighbor’s dog for barking. It’s a bully’s behavior, something that causes harm without creating any positive change.
    - fuzzyfuzzyfungus
      
      It is unfortunate that it is typically quite hard to target the responsible party(any hitmen want to head to kickstarter?); but there is the theory that, since employee turnover is expensive and dirtier jobs are, all else being equal, harder to recruit for, being as unpleasant as legally possible to telemarketers is a way of hitting their paymasters…
      
      Whether the collateral damage troubles you is, of course, a slightly different question.
    - donovan acree
      
      Despite what anyone tells you, needing work and money does not excuse you from making poor decisions. If you choose to work for one of the bottom feeders, expect to be treated like one.
      By your reasoning we should excuse burglars since they cannot quit without loosing their lively hood. Bunk!
      - http://rightcrafttool.blogspot.com/ Sign Ahead
        
        Your comment about burglars is a false equivalence. As someone who has been on the receiving end of both telemarketing calls and a burglary (with all of the trimmings, like a brick through the window, thoroughly ransacked rooms, thousands of dollars in losses, and traumatized family members who no longer view their home as a safe sanctuary) I can tell you conclusively that they are not comparable at all.
        
        I suspect that you knew this when you wrote your post and you just let your enthusiasm get the best of you. Surely you can tell the difference between dealing with a legal annoyance like telemarketing, and a felonious invasion of a person’s home?
        
        I do agree that telemarketing is annoying and invasive. Personally, I hate receiving sales calls of any kind. But when I receive an unwanted call, I respond by hanging up. I don’t respond by attacking a target of convenience who can easily be hurt but who can’t actually change the situation. To me, that’s bullying, not problem-solving.
        
        If I do want to take further action, I try to aim it at someone who can actually change the situation. I file a complaint with the correct legal authority or I write a quick letter to my congressman. This may not be as satisfying to the angry child who lives inside my head, but it has a much better chance of creating change and it is much, much easier on my conscience.
    - donovan acree
      
      A false equivalence only exists due to the structure of the law. I’d propose making the invasion of my home against my will via telephone a crime as well. In fact, there are so many people who agree with me on this point that a law has been created. Of course, with the bleeding hearts out there have neutered the law giving it no real teeth, giving political speech a pass, and forcing victims to put themselves on a do not victimize list. Sure you have your freedom of speech but why does it extend in to my home?
      
      The idea that a telemarketer cannot change the situation is ridiculous. No one is forced to be a telemarketer.
Thad Boyd

Well, yes, the onus is on the employer to protect you from physical abuse by callees, but it’s also on the callees not to physically abuse you in the first place. There’s plenty of liability to go around, and it’s not hard to see why a low-level worker would be more inclined to go after the person who actually, directly did the harm than the company that signs her checks.

(EDIT: Was meant as a reply to alex w, up top. Dunno why it didn’t post that way.)
http://mordicai.livejournal.com Mordicai

Am I the only one whose first thought was Captain Crunch? Gosh dangit, I think I must be getting old.
- bcsizemo
  
  It’s to bad a blotto box doesn’t work over a cell phone.
  - CastanhasDoPara
    
    I suppose there is a reason to keep a POTS line in the house after all. Kind of a waste since you would have to move after using it though.
    
    (At full pedant, I get the spirit of what you mean but taking it out on your whole area code is probably not the wisest of things to do. Unless you live next door to the call center anyway.)
http://twitter.com/hankenstein Hank Mitchell

hearing damage? really? thats like taking a picture of the sun and showing it to someone to “blind” them
Jack_Spellman

Here’s the script at our house when we get an unwanted phone call:

“Wedon’trespondtotelephonesolicitationsthankyou”/hang-up
- http://lemoutan.blogspot.com/ Lemoutan
  
  Shouldn’t that be ”Thisisourresponsetotelephonesolicitationsthankyou”/hang-up
Ms. Anne Thrope

Good riddance to the telemarketers. Unfortunately, the DO NOT CALL list doesn’t cover the political calls. I pick up the phone and lay it down. An answered call gets put into rotation, so a telemarketer picks up the call, asks “Hello?” several times. Time wasted, money wasted. More people should try this trick. As for this citation, I agree with comments about concerts being much louder and telephone volume insufficient to cause real damage- malarkey!
- petertrepan
  
  You can also listen to the whole script, then tell the caller that you don’t have the authority to do whatever he’s asking, and that he really needs to talk to someone in Solicitations Receivable and will he please hold. Then continue switching departments until he hangs up, or you run out of voices.
  
  Or, listen to the whole script, then ask in a very slow old man/woman voice if he is your grandson.
  
  Or, complain several times about the quality of the audio, then attempt to sell him a new headset.
  - Wreckrob8
    
    Sometimes I let them go through the whole script and then tell them I am unable to make a decision unless they can send me all the information in writing, which of course they cannot do. They want card details immediately. I am not sure whether this makes the poor employee suffer, losing possible sales from wasted time though. Alternatively, in the UK pre-dialling is illegal unless there is someone ready to answer as soon as the receiver is picked up. If there is no response to my first ‘hello’ I hang up straight away. Very rarely do they attempt to call back.
  - Donald Petersen
    
    Another of my rambling reminiscences, so apologies in advance. Back in 1995, I was working on a TV show whose production office and soundstage were located in a pair of nondescript brick buildings in the northernmost corner of North Hollywood just south of Roscoe Blvd, and down the block from a sizable junkyard. We had a fairly complicated phone system, and after a string of similar “wrong number” calls we realized that somehow the junkyard’s phone system had gotten crossed with our own. The office assistants soon learned that whenever Line 6 was ringing, someone was actually trying to call the junkyard. My pal Steve would hush everyone and answer:
    “Bueno.”
    “Hi… I need a passenger door for a 1981 Chevy Citation. You got any there?”
    “Hold on, man. Let me ask Chuy.”
    After putting the guy on hold for 30 seconds or so:
    “Looks like your lucky day, man. We got a red one. You like red? Chuy says we got a green one, too, but it’s not for sale. He really likes the green one.”
    “No, red’s okay. How much?”
    “I think you could talk him out of the green one if you brought $500 in cash. The red one, heck, come on down and you can have it for four bucks. Just come down and ask for Chuy. We’re open until 6. Roscoe and San Fernando.”
    
    Yeah, Steve could be a asshole.
bbonyx

I call bullshit until I see some definitives on the frequency ranges and amplitudes of the whistle and the phone system.

Years ago I had a problem with people calling and leaving annoying messages on my voicemail. To deter them, I took my GF’s rape alarm (insanely loud, piercing and painful in person, as it was designed to be) and recorded that as my VM outgoing, in hopes that anyone calling would not stand to sit through it long enough to leave an annoying VM.

We did a test after recording and what came through the phone system was significantly less than what was recorded in person, due to the frequency range and amplitude limitations of the phone system.

I find it hard to believe the telemarketer’s system had the fidelity to reproduce a damaging high-frequency tone at a volume high enough to incur permanent damage. Bullshit litigious posturing.
Finnagain

I think this should be legal and encouraged. Additionally, I’d like some sort of similar tactic for the email spammers. Maybe electric shocks?
hakuin

how about telemarketers being confined to a list of numbers from people who have opted in to telephone solicitation?
- Ms. Anne Thrope
  
  Then they would get the old and lonely and wouldn’t that be funny and sad and longwinded and ….
http://gspirits.com/ Zod

We have a device connected to our phone that tells robo-dialers that the number it dialed is an out of service number. When the robo-dialer hears the tone this thing generates, it hangs up and removes our number from their dial list…no reason for a robo-dialer to maintain an out of service number!
- chgoliz
  
  Details please. Make, model, source, and does it work if you answer before realizing it’s a robocall?
  - http://memoid.tumblr.com/ memoid
    
    Seconded, details please. Sounds like witchcraft to me!
  - Tribune
    
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeleZapper
    
    Read the whole entry – as would be predicted some telemarketers have removed the vulnerability
  - jwkrk
    
    There’s a lot of good information here (including a link to the “out of service” tone .WAV file.
    
    http://wolfram.org/writing/howto/phone.html
- http://ae4rv.com/ royaltrux
  
  Is there an app for that??
TheMadLibrarian

We have an answering machine that tells us what number is calling. If it’s ‘unknown’ or ‘blocked’, we let them talk to the nice machine. Often the robodialer has hung up before they even get to the part where they leave a message. Sadly, some telemarketers can spoof phone numbers.
Atomicpanda

Completely worth it.
http://scavenger-ethic.blogspot.com/ scav

The take-home lesson here is: deny intent, refuse to admit knowledge of the time and date of the call, don’t confirm you remember receiving it. Don’t admit to blowing a whistle.

Make them meet the high burden of proving that a whistling sound caused harm, that you blew a whistle to make the sound, and that you intended to do harm.And always put yourself on the do-not-call list, because then the bastards have to admit illegally calling you in order to accuse you of harming them.
igor alcyon

One should also cut the hands of the factory workers making metallic advertising board that annoys our precious gaze. That would just be fair, wouldn’t it?
- http://ae4rv.com/ royaltrux
  
  What are you smoking? A whistle blown over the phone is not “cutting”. A billboard that sits on property that I do not own does not annoy me while I’m making dinner at home.
  - igor alcyon
    
    The analogy was: the factory worker making ad boards works with his hands, if it is cut, then he can’t work and make a livelihood. If you destroy a teleoperator’s tympans, the result is the same. Both adboards and ad phone calls are forms of advertising. Both are annoying. And both workers are near the bottom of the job market.
    
    But you are right too. Giant adboards do certainly not annoy you while you are making dinner at home, especially if they do not sit in front of your windows. And hurting a tympan is not cutting. I absolutely agree.
    
    I do smoke tobacco.
    - AlexG55
      
      If you are on your country’s equivalent of the Do Not Call list, then any telemarketer who calls you is working for a criminal enterprise. While I appreciate that people need to work to eat, I don’t think “just doing their job” is an excuse if the job involves breaking the law.
      
      What if you have a barbed-wire fence, and a burglar cuts his hands while climbing over it to steal your TV? Sure, he needed to rob houses to earn a living, and now he can’t “work”- I still don’t think it was wrong to put that fence up.
- donovan acree
  
  Factory workers creating metallic advertising board do not prey on the elderly by encouraging them to purchase things they cannot afford. They do not use the crippling isolation and loneliness of being elderly in order to make a buck. They do not lie about what they are doing when they sell their boards.
  Telemarketers are low scum and should be spat upon.
  Full disclosure, I worked as a telemarketer for a brief time while in school. I quit because it wasn’t law school so I wasn’t training to become an amoral person.
http://artdonovan.typepad.com Art

As an aside, the entire antique method of advertising needs to be overhauled.
From TV comms to junk mail.

Who actually responds positively to spam emails, endless annoying commercials, telemarketing calls, unwanted pop-up ads and junk mail?

Do the advertisers truly believe that their methods would get us interested enough to support their products or services-or- do they live on another planet?
- http://ae4rv.com/ royaltrux
  
  Well, it continues to exist, there must be SOME payoff.
  Personally I can not believe that robo-calling (for any purpose) is legal.
- http://memoid.tumblr.com/ memoid
  
  I’m no expert on this but I think it might have to do with a “We advertise, therefore we are” kind of perception. In a sense that, although you would never click on one of those ads or buy something over the phone, it still embeds in you the idea that this is a legit company spending money to take part in economic undertakings… Maybe?
  
  I know TV spots used to do this to me when I was a child – “Oh, it’s on TV, it must be legit”.
- Tynam
  
  Their methods do get us interested enough to support their products. If they didn’t, they would stop. It’s a business. (Conclusion – there are many people out there stupid enough to buy from telemarketers.)
- CastanhasDoPara
  
  Just like most scams, it doesn’t have to work every time as long as it works every once in a while.
  
  And yes there are suckers out there that will talk to anybody, buy anything or believe whatever you tell them. Once again, it’s the idiots of the world that ruin it for everybody else. But as a dear friend of mine was fond of saying, ‘you can’t fix stupid’.
http://www.sheffieldindustrialhearing.co.uk AudioTherapist

Hi all. Just to let you know that acoustic shock syndrome is a recognised condition that can result in permanent hearing loss, tinnitus, hyperacusis, panic attacks, aversive behaviour and phobia.

Thankfully they’re fairly rare cases but I have seen some cases in my clinic. More details can be found here:

http://www.hse.gov.uk/noise/acoustic.htm

http://www.isvr.co.uk/reprints/ac_shock.pdf

http://www.thebsa.org.uk/abstracts/ClinicalUpdateDay/Presentations%20Day%202/BSA%20Acoustic%20shock%20handout.pdf
- TheMadLibrarian
  
  The other stuff is bad, mmmkay, but ‘aversive behaviour’, especially if it gets them not to drag me out of the shower for a telemarketing call, I don’t mind.
  - fuzzyfuzzyfungus
    
    I believe that we refer to this ‘aversive behavior’ as ‘learning’.
    - http://www.sheffieldindustrialhearing.co.uk AudioTherapist
      
      You obviously haven’t bothered to click on the links to the clinical information I provided…
      
      If you believe that all learning is through pain and trauma then I’m rather concerned for you. Aversive behaviour is an abnormal reluctance to engage in routine daily activity to to prior negative exposure. I don’t think it is at all acceptable to give people a reason to have diminished quality of life just because you have been mildly inconvenienced for a few seconds.
      
      I can be as abrupt and dismissive as the next person when receiving one of these calls but actively wishing the caller harm is seriously warped thinking and hardly a proportionate response to the insult received.
- Ultan
  
  And the cause here is not the whistle, but the headset which did not have the volume limiter necessary for safety. Only the headset made any sound that the telemarketer could hear, and only the headset manufacturer, the telemarketer and her employer had any control over its amplification level.
  
  People using phones have a reasonable expectation that there may often be loud noises picked up by the microphone on the other end of the call. I have heard loud music, loud people, backup-warning beepers, gunfire, car alarms, sirens and phones dropping onto hard surfaces as well as all sorts of other loud background noises. Anyone who doesn’t want to take the risk of hearing loud noises on the phone needs to either not use phones or get a phone or headset with automatic gain control.
vrplumber

One of my favorite responses to the telemarketing demons is pretending to have a bad connection… Hello? Hello? Hello!?!
O well…. “click”
http://sivuhuomioita.tumblr.com/ Jere Majava

The mother of my ex girlfriend used a whoopie cushion for this purpose. I don’t know f it worked but I loved the idea of having her as my mother-in-law.
eyehave1i

A while ago I’d heard a clip on the radio of a guy who got sick of being called by telemarketers, so he came up with this idea of posing as a police detective inspecting a crime scene where he was trying to ascertain the identity of the victim.

Since the caller called the number of the “victim”, he told the caller that he might be a person of interest in the murder scene and that he’d have to get his name, number and address while at the same time inserting extemporaneous things that where hilarious; one of them something about a cute mexican midget…it was so odd the things he was saying. I wish I could remember it.

Anyway, upon hearing what the “detective” was saying, you could detect a sense of My-day-really-took-an-uncomfortable-turnedness (if that can be used to make up a word}. It almost sounded as if he was about to cry; there was definitely a sense of fear in the tone of his voice.

Anyway, again, I decided to try that on one of those calls, and it was so entertaining. Unfortunately, I’ve got creditors calling me now, and I’m not sure I can do that with them. So my phone’s been on silent/vibrate for a while. It feels good when it starts to rattle the change in my pocket, there’s always a sunny side. I like the idea of the whistle though. It’s too bad that she’s got a record and such a big fine. Ultimately stupid if you ask me about her getting fined. But personally, I think it’s appropriate…kind of like an act of civil disobedience.

My mom’s German, and I lived there when I was younger when my dad was stationed there, and if there’s one thing I know is that the general population there love them their rules and regulations.
- http://ae4rv.com/ royaltrux
  
  Sounds like Tom Made.
  
  Yep, found it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7OgWcwgB50
  
  Plenty more where that came from.
WaferMouse

Regardless of whether the whistleblower deserved the call or not, blowing a whistle right into someone’s ear is not the correct way to treat a human. I doubt she would have done it in the flesh, that’s how I define a troll.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Your argument rests on the premise that Homo telemarketerensis is human.
  - WaferMouse
    
    Sure they are. They’re just regular people trying to get by. Not everyone needs to be proud of what they do if it puts food on the table.
    - jennix
      
      No but they do have to put up with backlash from taking tainted money from their telemarketing overlords. There are other jobs. If nobody would take these jobs, we wouldn’t all have to put up with them… goodness knows if they could telemarket without any warm bodies at all they would.
      - WaferMouse
        
        All things being equal, employment prospects infinite, and a telemarketing overlord being the equivalent of Darth Vader, I’d agree with you. But all of these statements are false, so I can’t.
        
        I’m not saying that this isn’t a system that deserves to be torn down, but there’s no point in taking it out on the individual.
      - hakuin
        
        robocalls
    - http://darkmobius.com Andrew Molloy
      
      Couldn’t you make the same argument for hitmen or drug dealers?
      - WaferMouse
        
        You could, but you’d have a hard time convincing me that the professions are at all similar otherwise.
      - http://darkmobius.com Andrew Molloy
        
        I’m not trying to convince you of that and if that’s what you took from my point then you missed it. But the tired old “everyone has a job to do” is hardly reason enough to defend anything.
        
        Besides which, the only telemarketers that call me are breaking the law by doing so, so doesn’t that make them criminals anyway?
http://decayfilm.com ssam

i hate unsolicited calls just as much as anyone, but the guy working in the call centers have it far worse than you. They don’t enjoy calling you. But if they don’t hit targets for calls per hour, sales per hour, minutes on call etc then they face disciplinary and risk loosing there job. the job market is not to great at the moment, and the bottom end of it is pretty rough jobs.

so the best thing to do is just to politely tell them that you are not interested.
- dolo54
  
  I used to mug people, I didn’t enjoy harassing them and asking for money, but if I didn’t hit my target muggings per day I would risk being unable to eat.
http://dailygrail.com/ Red Pill Junkie

In other news, a house burglar successfully sues home owner with assault after being hit with a baseball bat…
- CaptainPedge
  
  it happens…
hakuin

telemarketers harm people. They cause harm. They do this knowingly. They are making a conscious choice to do it anyway because someone will give them money.
disky00

If you’re in the US, just go to this website and register your number on the national Do Not Call list. No one should bother you afterward.

https://www.donotcall.gov/
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Did you not read the thread? All kinds of businesses are exempt from the DNC.
  - http://jere7my.livejournal.com jere7my
    
    And some of the worst offenders flagrantly defy the law.
  - disky00
    
    All I know is that I don’t get calls from telemarketers anymore. Sorry, I haven’t run a study on the efficacy of the list, just my personal positive experience.
dolo54

A telemarketer going deaf is just simple karma. You know who else used to call on people uninvited? That’s right, THE NAZIS!

This sort of reminds me of that scene in Clerks about the Death Star workers in Return of the Jedi. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQdDRrcAOjA
pjcamp

It’s much simpler to just lay the phone down on the table and wait until you hear the disconnected line siren. Then hang up. Wasting their time saves at least one more person from being called that day.
Ganesh Subramaniam

Want to know how I deal with pesky calls? I tell them “Wait a minute, I’ll get back to you” and carry on whatever I was doing when the call came. But now they have improvised! It is not a “human” calling anymore; it is a machine and we are not able to interfere or break-in the one way conversation. I have made a note of all the numbers of such calls and disconnect when I see one on my caller ID. :-) Yes, I know they are just doing their job. Ever hear of anyone listening with interest to one of these calls?
http://shadowfirebird.tumblr.com shadowfirebird

Here in the UK I can honestly say that I tell people not to ring me on the landline because I will not pick it up. It’s exclusively used by people and machines calling me to sell me stuff. The answerphone generally gets about 4 calls a day, minimum; weekends too. And most callers ring off before the answerphone can finish it’s spiel, so it’s probably much higher.

I am seeing more and more robodialing. It used to be illegal here; I don’t think it is any more. Half the numbers are obviously spoofed: I see “00″ as a number a lot.

I won’t change the number in case an old friend has that as the only point of contact. I’m registered with the Telephone Preference Service. I know lots of people that swear by it; it does nothing for me.