Bah. Bots.

By | August 11, 2018

Am I the only person who hangs up on an incoming phone call the moment you hear that pause at the start that means that a predictive dialer is looking for a human to take over?

You’d think they’d game it to make the system make a little noise during that pause, like a cough to make you think the person who’s calling is there, but momentarily inconvenienced. Admittedly, we’d all learn to recognize those little tricks as well, but it’d work for a while.

I was sitting at my desk at home this morning when the land line rang. Absent-mindedly, I immediately answered it.

Pause. Classic predictive-dialer dead-air sound.

Then a human voice came on the line: “Hello?” Without even thinking I hung the phone up. 

Some time later I tried to check the caller ID to see who I’d hung up on, but for some reason the call wasn’t listed. Perhaps it’d been too short in duration to be captured.

I idly wonder who it was… but I don’t really care. They didn’t call back. Can’t have been very important.

(I’d turn off our land line entirely but having it is how we get DSL.)

Leave a comment!