I mentioned here about the endless stream of phone calls I get from strangers trying to sell me construction work, solar panels and other things I neither need nor want. And if I did want need or want them, I wouldn't hire an unknown vendor who called me out of the blue, ignoring my Do Not Call status and (usually) lying to me about how they called me last year and I told them to call back now.
My longtime buddy Joe Brancatelli writes to ask…
Why do you pick up the phone?
I swear, that is a serious question. No one in this day and age answers these marketing calls. I'd really like to know why a smart guy like you does?
Three reasons, one being that I occasionally get a call from an unknown Caller I.D., answer it and it's a call I'm glad I didn't miss. When my mother was in the hospital or the nursing home, the call was occasionally about her…or once, even from her. Now and then, these calls were really, really important.
Yeah, 95% of the time, a mysterious Caller I.D. means someone who wants to give me a free estimate on encasing my home in aluminum siding. But I don't want to take the risk of missing the 5% calls that really matter, especially since I have a number of friends who are not in great health and occasionally need my aid.
The second reason is that it's annoying to get the calls but it doesn't cost me any more of my time to answer them and tell the person to get lost than it does to not answer the calls. If it's a recording, I can dump the call in ten seconds and then go back to work. If I do answer and it's a human being or something very close to one then I spend thirty seconds telling the caller to buzz off. If I don't answer, then I spend thirty seconds wondering if I should have answered it and considering who it might have been if it wasn't a sales call.
Lastly, my experience is that if I do answer it and tell the salesguy I will never need his service and not to call me again, that particular company usually doesn't call back. Others will call but not that one. If I don't answer, they call back again and again until I do. I recognize the same Caller I.D. over and over again for days of calling after.
So if I don't answer, it's thirty seconds and there's a good chance they'll call again. If I do answer, it's thirty or less and they might not call again. So I do.