Designers Blog:
6 Ways to passive aggressively wast nuisance callers time

Of course not and we would not like to publicly promote the sort of behaviour listed below. This is of course a bit of fun and should be treated as such.

After all nuisance callers are people too, sometimes really real people and should be treated humanely and with dignity….

…Or be given the run around because you have got excess time on your hands. But that’s on you, not us.

We therefore present this to make you smile and hopefully raise a giggle but of course never practice (you’re a grownup do what you like, don’t let us preach, if we told you to jump off a cliff etc etc)

1. Get in there first

After a while we all recognise the type of numbers used by the nuisance callers  that have been hounding you. It’s normally regarding some crap that your not fussed on i.e. PPI, conducting a survey ‘that’s not going to sell to you later, honest’ or joining an investment circle (whatever that is). We get 0203 numbers we don’t recognise quite a bit for example. So if you get called by what you think is a nuisance caller hit the accept button, and before they’ve said anything get in there first.

It goes like this:

Caller dials, you answer.

You: Hello is Dave there?

Nuisance Caller: Um…….

Yes, it confuses the stuffing out of most nuisance callers. Didn’t they call you? Why would you be asking to speak to someone? This will usually throw them completely off their script. They will respond with ‘I think you/I have the wrong number’ or perhaps hang up, regardless of either it provides you with an instant feeling of empowerment.

Ok, so the elephant in the room is what if there is a guy called Dave (or whatever name you choose to use – it’s your gig!) in the call centre and this caller puts you through in a confused panic? Well in this scenario it’s completely up to you regarding how you proceed, how much time do you have? Can you make out that you know Dave really well from a past experience you and Dave never shared? See if you can perhaps strike up a conversation with him/her (not ignoring the Davina’s out there). How far are you willing to push this? Your call, your empowerment trip….

2. Give give give give and give

If you’ve had enough fun with number 1 (surely not) perhaps try a new game of making it all about you. After all, they are calling you, they must be interested in you right? Engage them in some usual small talk to get them all relaxed and not thinking about you being at all unbalanced and then go big quickly, go really big. Tell them about your achievements and how that was fundamental in your progression, it really doesn’t matter how ridiculously small they were. Did you perhaps win a Blue Peter badge? Maybe you got a ‘sportsman of the year award’ (which is really a way of saying you were bad at the sport but tried really hard….sorry to break this to you here)? It’s best to go off in a tangent here, unrelentingly not letting the caller back into the conversation. It is also recommended to steer very clear from the subject of the sales call.