GMO’s Again

There was an article on alternet last summer, which stated that the five most awful atheists are Sam Harris, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Penn Jillette, S.E. Cupp, and Bill Maher.

I think the biggest mistake the article makes ipls that it conflates atheism with scientific skepticism. It’s certainly true that there’s certainly no shortage of overlap between the two worldviews; something like 95% of all scientists are atheists. Of course, not all atheists are scientists (that includes me; I had a very bad experience with my physics teacher in high school that kind of soured me on science as a discipline…)

Bill Maher is fairly unrepentant in his animus towards organized religion and has only recently referred to himself formally as an atheist. (He had previously called himself agnostic). And he’s a great example of the lack of overlap between the two worldviews. I have written before about how I perceive Bill Maher’s take on medicine. He hasn’t said much about medicine in recent years and has taken on a new cause: the opposition to Genetically Modified Organisms or GMO’s, specifically as pertains to our food supply.

And I couldn’t disagree with him more about this. Through some form of selection or another — be in natural selection, selective breeding, artificial selection, or agriculture, by definition everything we eat, has been genetically modified. Whether it’s in a lab or in the ground, genetic modification happens all the time.

As I said above, I’m not a scientist and don’t pretend to be one, but I understand it well enough to know that genetic modification is the key to feeding a world where populations of plants and animals are dying out, the planet is getting warmer, and human population is increasing.

Simply put: we should not be opposed to GMO’s, no matter what we choose to call them. (I kind of like the term “frankenfood” even though it’s intended to be a fearmongering term…)

Some might argue that growing organic crops is preferable to GMO’s. On a small scale, sure. But you’re never going to be able to grow enough crops organically and feed seven billion people.

I’ve written before about GMO’s and how denial of science is neither a conservative nor a liberal phenomenon, as the following clip from last weekend’s Real Time with Bill Maher will attest. I have to forewarn you if you watch it: it’s painful to watch or even listen to. It’s kind of aggravating how close he comes to getting “it” but then swerves away on an anti-GMO kick.

Of all of Bill Maher’s “New Rules” I think this is the most painful one to listen to.

Now, I can acknowledge that Monsanto has done some shady things in the realm of patenting its processes, and for that they do deserve criticism. But that is an argument for patent reform. To use its patent-trolling penchant as an argument against GMO’s is essentially an ad hominem attack. Except, of course, Monsanto isn’t a human being. (But they are a person in the eyes of the law…)

Bill Maher has the right to his views and opinions. And it’s stuff like this that put him on the list of the five most awful atheists. But his position on this has nothing to do with whether or not god exists. It just shows that he’s not a scientist.

Then again, neither am I. Is the only thing keeping me off of that list, the fact that I’m not famous?

The Onion Fucks Up

The night before last, at the Academy Awards, the movie Argo took home the award for best picture. While director and producer Ben Affleck was speaking on the stage, thanking the academy and everyone involved in the production of the movie, the satirical newspaper The Onion crossed a line, with regard to the 9-year-old star (and Best Actress nominee) of the movie Beasts of the Southern Wild, with the following tweet:

(I’m using an image of the tweet because it has since been deleted, but this is the internet and nothing is ever truly invisible…)

The Onion is known for its satire, often hard-edged and at times offensive to the people or groups whom they lampoon. That much is a given.

And there’s no question about it: this was offensive. And wrong. And, to be frank, not funny. (Full disclosure: I haven’t seen the movie Beasts of the Southern Wild, nor do I know anything about Quvenzhané Wallis, other than the fact that she’s the youngest nominee for best actress in the history of the Academy Awards. So maybe there could be something here that I missed, but I sincerely doubt it…)

So the fundamental question is whether or not, even in a tongue-in-cheek sense, there are times when calling 9-year old girl a “cunt” is right. And I admit it: I can’t think of one.

This coming from a guy who believes that there is no such thing as a topic that’s so taboo, so off-limits, that we can’t make fun of it. Yes, attempts at humor with some topics can make you more enemies than friends, but I strongly support the right to make these kinds of jokes.

So the Onion did the right thing, the noble thing, the admirable thing, and apologized. As far as I can tell, the apology is sincere, although the line about “taking immediate steps to discipline those individuals responsible” raises more questions than it answers.

The one big question that bears asking, is whether or not this was merely a lapse in judgment on the part of an indeterminate number of staffers at the Onion, or if something far more systemic was at play here. Hell, I don’t even know how much time elapsed between when the concept was first considered, and when it got posted. Or was this a natural consequence of a work culture that tries to be biting, hard-hitting, in-your-face, and, well, crude? That question will likely never be answered.

And, I’d like to reiterate that the Onion did the right thing by apologizing. One other question that does come up — and we won’t know this for quite some time — is whether this is going to have a lasting impact on the quality of the satire we see coming out of that website. The last thing we want is for a bigger named celebrity (in the realms of either entertainment or politics) demanding an apology because of the way The Onion lambasted them.

If it means anything, I’m hopeful at least about the quality of the satire, as evidenced by today’s satirical take on a big news item from yesterday: U.K. Cardinal Resigns in Wake of — Get This — Sex Abuse Allegations .

Denial of Science

I’d like to talk for a little bit about science. It’s a fairly interesting process: someone comes up with an idea and then that someone, and all of his or her colleagues will greet the idea with skepticism and do whatever they can, in hopes of proving that idea wrong.

Over time, the efforts to disprove the idea get so detailed and don’t come to fruition, that the idea becomes pretty much established fact.

Even after the science becomes established as a fact, though, there remain people who continue to deny the fact.

We can criticize National Geographic magazine for having a cover that hints that evolution isn’t established science. But the article, at least, gets it right.

I find it interesting that denial of science comes in two flavors: from the right, we have denial of evolution or climate change, and from the left, we have alternative medicine and a potential disdain for some new technologies.

In the past few months, I’ve had a couple of run-ins with friends of mine on facebook involving some of the liberal science denial.

The first one was when a picture that originated with a chiropractor’s office was “shared”. It had three columns to it, each getting progressively longer and listed the number of required vaccines that children need to get, with the shorter column being longer ago and the longest column being what is required now, and the underlying implication was that the increased number of vaccines for children has resulted in more problems.

I gave a snarky response: taking vaccine advice from a chiropractor is akin to getting psychiatric advice from a scientologist.

Chiropractic medicine is a form of alternative medicine. I’m not a big fan of the term “alternative medicine” to begin with, as it has very little to do with science based medicine. This is why a chiropractor isn’t really considered a medical doctor.

If I’m being generous, alternative medicine is a supplement to, and not a replacement for, real medical treatment. I know that my sister swears by her chiropractor. And I had a really negative experience with one a few years back that left me on edge for at least an hour after it was done. But both of those are anecdotes and should be discounted in favor of real, hard research.

At best, a chiropractor is helpful in pain management and maybe can do some things to help improve posture.

My wife practices Reiki. I don’t deny that I can feel the heat coming from her hands when she tries it on me. But that means that her hands quite literally serve the same function as a fifteen dollar heating pad I can buy at the local drug store. Without having to maneuver around another, you know, human body.

Again, pain management.

The movie Contagion is a taut thriller about the spread of a deadly disease and how to combat the outbreak. Jude Law plays a snake oil salesman who claims to have a cure for this disease, and a desperate and gullible public believes him. Not only does his cure not work, but when supplies of his “miracle cure” start to dwindle, it literally results in a riot. It turns out that the only thing he’s really good at, is digging up dirt on the legitimate scientists (distracting people from finding a real cure), but the damage is done. While this is an extreme risk of alternative medicines, it is a very real one.

I think Tim Minchin summed it up the best with his beat poem, Storm:

The other facebook moment is with regard to Proposition 37 in California, which was defeated by a margin of 53.1 – 46.9% on Election Day the other day.

If you read the text of the ballot measure, it’s pretty easy to see why it lost: it basically was a witch hunt against a single company.

Now, I have no problem if people have a grudge against a specific company. And there’s nothing wrong with organizing boycotts if that floats your boat. But to put the resources of an entire state government against that company, when that company is not in violation of any existing laws? That really doesn’t seem appropriate.

Furthermore, all of the foods we eat are, in some capacity, genetically modified. The very nature of agriculture is genetic modification. Nearly 100% of all of the turkeys we domesticate and consume at any time, are conceived via artificial insemination. This is because we have selected the largest birds to continue to reproduce (thus feeding more people) and now, they are too big to reproduce naturally. This is evolution in action.

So, too, is genetic modification in a lab. Producing plants that are sturdier and more capable of defending itself against pests doesn’t sound to me, like a bad thing. If anything, it sounds a lot better than spraying nasty pesticides over the crops.

There is room for patent reform if Monsanto has claimed intellectual property over their genetically modified foodstuffs, and I am — in a general sense — an advocate for patent reform.

And the FDA has a responsibility to ensure that the processes and results are safe. I don’t want to downplay that.

Once safety can be assured — a scientific process in and of itself — I don’t have any real problem with genetically modified foods. If you do, then don’t eat them. But don’t put a label on the foods that would do little more than scare the uninformed.

George Hrab has a song called “Skeptic”, which puts it pretty well. I apologize that the sound quality of this video isn’t great, but…

“Before your eyes widen at the books on the shelf, think:
Is he helping you, or is he helping himself?”

Flashback: Cost-Cutting Measures

In anticipation of the shutdown of Apple’s MobileMe service, I am re-posting some of my old blog entries before they become harder to retrieve.

This entry was originally posted on September 4, 2004.

The process by which a business brings a product or service to the marketplace is not a short or an easy one. It begins with someone’s idea, followed by the necessary approvals, then resources are dedicated to the development of the product or service, followed by marketing and then delivery to the general public. Depending on the industry, there may also be federal and/or state regulations that need to be accommodated. Marketing includes advertising, testing the general public for how receptive they might be to the product or service, education of the sales force and the actual process of making the sale.

So, with all of those costs in mind, it doesn’t bother me when a company wishes to turn a profit on a product or service that they provide. If it costs a company $1.00 to produce that product, it may not be unreasonable to charge $1.10, maybe $1.50, or even $2.00 to the end consumer, as long as they’re willing to pay for it.

Right now I have my mind set on two specific industries whose processes and policies make them likely candidates for a large-scale consumer uprising. Keep in mind that both of these industries have encountered steadily increasing costs, are heavily regulated by the government, and enjoy a relatively captive consumer base.

And the end consumer has been paying more, at least in part, due to unnecessary marketing.

The two industries I am talking about are the credit card industry, and the pharmaceutical industry.

Credit cards. Not a day goes by when I do not receive at least two solicitations in my mail to take out new credit cards. Add in the fact that most retail stores today offer deals on financing purchases by taking out a new credit card, and all banks and credit unions offer the ability to take out a credit card, I can’t see how direct-mail solicitations — even with postal service discounts — serve any need other than to drive up the interest rates and/or fees charged on credit cards. In the case of one noteworthy bank that I shall not name in the interest of being polite, I receive solicitations to take out a credit card with them, even though I already have a card by them. (But I will link to them. Tee hee.)

As I write these words, I’m thinking of my son, Harry , who was just born 16 days ago. Although I have not yet received Harry’s social security card, I know that he is in the process of receiving his own social security number, the basis of his financial identity as he gets older. I figure it is only a matter of time before he receives his first solicitation to take out a credit card.

In 1993, a new drug was placed on the market, after obtaining FDA approval. This drug was called Rogaine. The baldness cure was the first to market itself directly to potential consumers, in spite of the fact that it was only available as a prescription when it first came out. Furthermore, this drug took the unconventional step of insulting its potential clients by having ads that literally said nothing about it. The handsome men and women hawking the product said “I started taking Rogaine. You know, with Minoxidil…” No, I don’t necessarily know, and if you expect me to know something about your product without giving me any specifics about what it does, there’s no way I’m going to talk to my doctor about it.

The other extreme in drug advertising is saying what it does, and then it goes on to say that if you or anyone in your family has any history of heart disease, liver disease, diabetes, high cholesterol, ingrown toenails or lazy eye, you should avoid taking this drug.

To be fair, the pharmaceutical industry is heavily regulated by the government, and with reason. All drugs must be proven reasonably safe before they can be brought to market, and the risks should be well documented, since all drugs have some kind of side effect. Therefore, when it comes to mass advertising, they either have to be so vague as to not reveal what the drug is actually intended to do, or they should give warnings about every potential reaction the drug could have with your body and/or other drugs you might be taking.

I have another suggestion with regard to advertising of drugs: don’t allow them except in medical trade publications and direct marketing to the doctors who would prescribe it, the pharmacies who would dispense it, and the nurses who would give it out. Put information on your company’s website and websites like WebMD , but I don’t need to see or hear an ad in newspapers, magazines, TV, and radio, for a drug that I can’t walk into a drugstore and buy on my own, without a prescription.

Direct mail marketing of credit cards, and mass marketing of prescription drugs are two unnecessary costs for otherwise worthwhile products. These costs are only passed on to the consumer. I have no sympathy for either industry, when consumers try to go about finding ways of doing something cheaper and/or more efficiently.

A Little Objectification

I’d like to talk a little bit about objectification, or treating other people as objects. We all do it. Any time you use another human being as a means towards an end, without regard to that person’s overall feelings or position in life, you’re objectifying him or her.

Or, to put it another way, the cashier at the local grocery store? When he or she rings up your purchases, you’re objectifying him or her. Ditto for the barista at your local coffee house. When we see a movie, TV show, or play, we objectify everyone involved in the production as a means to our own enjoyment of whatever it is we’re watching.

Of course, no one objects to this kind of objectification.

Where you really hear complaints about objectification, of course, is in matters sexual. Or, more specifically, when men treat women as sex objects.

Let’s make things perfectly clear. There’s a time and a place for everything. It’s completely appropriate to treat a woman as a sex object during foreplay. When she’s giving the company’s quarterly earnings, it’s not. Anywhere in between is a gray area.

Strippers get paid to be objectified. Just like we pay the cashier at the grocery store, or the barista at the coffee house, or the people involved in the production of the movie, TV show, or play, they get objectified; it’s their job.

Personally, I think that arguments against pornography on these grounds are a little bit specious and not only because it seems as though the only type of objectification anyone seems to have any real problem with, is sexual.

Yes, it’s true that watching pornography is a form of objectification. But it seems to me that the people who argue against pornography don’t have a very high opinion of those who are doing the objectifying. Surely, if I look at a picture of a naked woman and think sexual thoughts, that doesn’t mean that, as a result of that picture, I’ll have sexual thoughts about all women, right?

But there is a much more dangerous form of objectification going on, than just thinking of another person as a vessel for one’s own personal pleasure. Admittedly, it’s sexual in nature. But not inherently pleasurable. It’s the form of objectification that regards women as little more than incubators for children.

In a couple of days, the state of Mississippi will vote on an amendment to the state constitution that defines a person as a fertilized egg. This, then, will effectively treat women who get an abortion, miscarry, take certain contraceptives, and maybe even have a stillborn baby as potential murder suspects. Even in situations where the woman’s life is in danger (such as with an ectopic pregnancy).

When I first heard about this, I vomited slightly in my mouth.

Yes, it’s true that we have evolved in such a way that women become pregnant and bear children. And it’s also true that the loudest arguments against abortion are ones that stem from a patriarchy that is fostered both politically and through certain religions.

There are valid arguments against abortion. That said, there are equally valid arguments for keeping it legal and educating people to the point that they’re not in a position to even consider needing an abortion.

As a form of objectification, prohibiting abortion basically means that we should think of a woman as nothing more than a uterus.

At least the objectification that comes from pornography looks at the entire woman’s body and not just her uterus.

They’re Not Ready for Public Consumption

If you own a device that runs either Apple’s iOS, or Google’s Android platform, you may be familiar with a website called Free App A Day.

FAAD is a decent, moderately well-designed website that negotiates with different developers of apps for your device and convinces them to offer their wares for free for a limited amount of time. The developers get access to more users, and more users equates to more reviews, which, in turn, can give the developers greater exposure even after the app returns to its full price. Most, but not all, apps on this website are games, so if you’re “into” games on your device, you might want to consider checking out the website. (Or the apps that mirror the content of the website…)

Back in September, 2010, they launched their sister site, called FAAD VIP. The idea behind this site seems to be a natural progression from the original Free App a Day website. Instead of negotiating with the developers to offer their apps for free, FAAD VIP instead asks their users to pay full price for a given app, play with the app a little bit, and write a review of it. Every review will, in turn, earn you “points,” which can be redeemed for credits in the iTunes store. (I can only assume that a similar model is in the works for the Android store…)

I joined this and paid the $0.99 for the game Battle Bears -1 almost immediately. This is an unremarkable shoot-em-up game that gets tedious really quickly. The best thing I can say about this game is that they did a fairly good job ripping off a Monty Python sketch in the opening sequence. I wrote up my review of this game within 24 hours of downloading it, and haven’t played the game since.

About a week after I downloaded and wrote my initial review of the game, I noticed that I hadn’t yet received my credits and I returned to the FAAD VIP site and it asked me to confirm that my user name was exactly the same as the name I use for my reviews. It wasn’t, so I corrected my user name on FAAD VIP and, just for good measure, I deleted my original review and rewrote it.

That was September 23, 2010.

On October 12, 2010, I sent an email to their support mailbox, asking about the status of my credits. I gave them a fair amount of information about how to identify my review from a sea of a large number of reviews for the game (many of which had been generated as a result of their promotion of the game).

A few hours later, I received an email in response that said, “It usually takes around 24 hours to get the credits but sometimes more.” The support rep also asked me to verify that everything matched between iTunes and their website.

Considering that I sent this email more than three weeks after I had written my review, this response was, to be polite, less than satisfactory. So I responded by reiterating what I had said in my original inquiry, and concluded by asking, “Please advise how much longer you expect me to wait.”

The response I received back from this email was quite brusque: “As I told you in my previous message, we validate reviews and send credits as fast as we can.
Thank you again for your patience.

On November 4, 2010, FAAD made a comment on Facebook about their FAADVIP program and I related not only my frustrations at not having received my credits by that point, but also about the brusqueness of my last correspondence with their customer service. The person who saw this comment advised me to contact their customer service again. So I did, including my comment about the brusqueness of the response.

The response I received addressed the brusqueness complaint thusly: I am really astonished when you say my answer was “brusque”, for I am always very polite with everyone. I think this person — whose name I still don’t know and who has never referred to me as anything other than “customer” — could teach our politicians a thing or two about giving a non-apology apology.

The customer support rep asked me, once again, to confirm that my iTunes nickname was the same as my nickname on FAAD VIP, and also advised that s/he transferred my issue to technical support. I responded back the following day to inform them, once again, that the names matched, and explaining the source of the brusqueness.

I received a response back on November 8, 2010, informing me that technical support is in charge of validation and that they work as fast as they can. As far as the brusqueness accusation, this is what they had to say: “Then you interpretation of my message was incorrect for there was no “brusqueness” in it. Sometimes, there is just nothing more I can answer than “we do our best to satisfy you”, and that is what My message meant.

Some time between then and December 20, 2010, Apple made a change to their iTunes software that enabled me to actually get a URL for all of the reviews I’ve written for things I’ve downloaded from their store (apps, music, movies, etc…) I wrote back to FAADVIP on December 20, 2010, asking about the status of my credits and providing the URL. If you have an iTunes account, you can see my reviews here. By now I had given up on the brusqueness complaint. They responded by saying they were still working on it.

Since then, I have reached out to them monthly — subsequent outreaches have taken place on January 20, 2011 and February 26, 2011 — to see what is going on and each time they have advised that they are still working on it. I haven’t formally asked why they can’t use the URL I provided as validation that I have, in fact, downloaded that app. (Apple doesn’t let you write reviews of apps you haven’t downloaded.)

Six months have now passed since I rewrote my review of the Battle Bears app, and I’m officially done with the site. Fortunately, I only lost a dollar, which I chalk up to being a lesson learned; I feel bad for those who might have lost more. Simply put, if they weren’t ready for inquiries like mine when they went “live” six months ago, they went “live” way too early. Theirs is a model for poor customer service and how to lose customers for no good reason.

Please note that all quotes from their customer service are copied verbatim from the emails I received.

In the Line of Fire

There is a debunked urban legend that holds that, when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on their shooting rampage in Columbine High School nearly twelve years ago, that they asked one girl if she was a Christian and she proudly said, “Yes,” before they shot her head off. The ultra-religious effectively declared her a “martyr” for their cause.

At the time, I remember thinking that I saw her as a part of the problem, of being a part of an organization that vilifies outsiders, pushing them to the point of stress, anger, outrage, and frustration that they do something desperate. That’s not to say that I’m blaming the victims here, but angry speech begets angry responses.

Sometimes, the target is the angry speakers themselves. Sometimes, it’s the target of those speakers’ anger.

But it doesn’t really take much to set someone off. A lot of people are angry over a lot of things — usually when they don’t feel as though they’re getting their fair share — and sometimes the release of that anger is a combination of motivation and opportunity.

A lot of pundits are arguing that the hateful rhetoric that is coming from the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and other people who currently occupy visible positions in the modern American political “right” caused the tragic shooting in Tuscon, AZ, two days ago that left nine people, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl dead, and a congresswoman in critical condition.

The shooter himself is not talking. He’s at least got that bit of his constitutional rights down. There’s relatively little doubt that he’s a nutjob.

Note that I’m using the word “nutjob” here because the word insane is a legal classification and I’m not qualified to say whether he is or is not certifiably insane. I’d almost argue that if he knows that he can stay quiet about something in order not to incriminate himself — which is to say he knows, at least in the vaguest, most nebulous of senses, that he may have done something wrong — is proof enough that he’s actually not insane. Insanity, I believe, has a requirement that you literally don’t know you’re doing something bad.

But here’s one thing I do think: the left-wing, the liberals, and the nebulous entity that Beck, Limbaugh, Palin et al refer to as “mainstream media” have finally found their voice.

Freedom of speech is a beautiful thing. It gives anyone the right and the opportunity to stand up and allow his or voice to be heard. But the conservatives have really been the only ones of late who have been taking advantage of this.

Now the liberals are stepping up and giving the conservatives a taste of their own proverbial medicine: vilifying their opponents, standing up, and effectively beating back their attackers. I hope they don’t stop.

At the end of the day, of course, we may never know if Jared Loughner was inspired by the words of any of the pundits on Fox News. Regardless, the left has finally decided to strike back, to call out the right using their own tactics against them. If Rush Limbaugh can try to incite fear in the populace by saying that liberals will take away your guns, then Rachel Maddow has the right to try to incite fear in the populace by saying that conservatives will encourage people to open fire while you’re out grocery shopping.

I hope that this time in American history is a short one, one that is not marked by vilification of one’s enemies but instead honest and thoughtful attempts to find common ground to solve our problems. That’s got to start with a well-informed electorate, not one that’s informed by pundits whose knee-jerk reaction to anything anyone says is derived from the political affiliations of those speakers, and certainly one that’s not informed by 30-second campaign ads on TV.

And so, in the words of another peace-loving individual who was gunned down way to early in life, “You may say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us. And the world will live as one.”

The Worst Telemarketer … Ever

During the summer between my junior and senior years of college, I worked as a telemarketer. I sold publications intended to improve some aspect of business, mainly sales and marketing, with a little bit of news about environmental needs thrown in. While I wouldn’t want to make a career out of it, I learned some very valuable lessons that summer which I still carry with me.

One of those lessons is that I am generally sympathetic to the telemarketers who call me, even if I’m not in the market for whatever it is they’re selling. What I’m about to relate is anything but sympathetic, and I recognize that.

An important rule for all telemarketers is that if a lead gives you the same objection twice, then you pretty much know you’re not going to make the sale, so you should terminate the call politely and move on to your next lead. This telemarketer did not do that.

I didn’t catch either this guy’s name or the name of the company he worked for. I can tell you that the caller ID said “Service Message” and the phone number from which he was calling, was 402-982-0481. Considering this man’s Indian accent, I sincerely doubt he was actually calling from Nebraska.

The call started out poorly. He said he was calling from a home security firm and was looking for “Mr. James.” I told him honestly, there is no “Mr. James” in my house. He didn’t need to know that James is my first, not my last name.

I know that my phone number used to belong to someone else — I know his name but little else about him, other than he hadn’t used this number in so long that the phone company recycled it. That said, I still get calls for him and I’ve had this number for nearly seven years. Unfortunately, since his last name wasn’t James either, I couldn’t quite show my hand on that little nugget of information.

So the guy apologetically said that he was given a wrong name but that he still needed to talk to me. His first real mistake was not asking me my name. All he knew was that I’m not “Mr. James.”

I speak from experience that the worst kind of sales call out there is done by telemarketers who are selling you a home security system. They couch it as though they were conducting some kind of a survey and then they’ll say that they’ll enter your name into some kind of drawing and if your name is drawn, then you’ll be entitled to a free home security system. I’ve gotten those calls before and made it clear that, because I’m in the middle of a five year contract with my home security system, I am quite literally not in the market for the product they’re selling, and that such an offer is a waste of their resources and my time.

So when my caller said he was asking about home security and that it was just a survey, I told him that I just took a survey like this about six months ago (which is true), and that I didn’t want to take the survey again and that I didn’t want a callback in a few weeks offering me a system I don’t want, don’t need, and couldn’t take even if I did.

My caller told me that I apparently hadn’t answered the last two questions of the survey and that he just needed to ask me those two questions.

By now I was starting to get angry, but I stuck on the phone with him. As a former telemarketer myself, I recognized what he was doing and effectively cutting to the chase. His first question was the number of smoke alarms in my house.

I told him it was three before he even had the chance to run through his multiple choices.

The next question he asked, was: what are my biggest home safety concerns for me and my family? I started to raise my voice and say it’s calls like these and then the later offers of a free home security system from companies like you.

He didn’t listen to what I said and asked the question again, and I repeated my answer. Somewhere in there, I made a comment about how I hope someone who does quality review of his calls gets to listen to the recording of my call, since he didn’t listen to any of my objections and kept going on with everything as though I cared what he had to say. I had to repeat at least three times that the biggest security issue I care about was not getting calls like those anymore.

Finally he thanked me for my time and went on to say that my number would be entered into a drawing and if I was picked, I’d be getting a call to set up a free GE-brand home security system.

Well, that’s where I went ballistic. I told him that I didn’t want him to enter my name into the drawing, for the reasons I had elaborated on numerous times throughout the call, and that I didn’t want a callback if my name is drawn. I was yelling into the phone at this time.

(Note that this assumes that a drawing actually takes place. I suspect that all people who get the first call, will get the second a few weeks later, but I don’t know that for a fact…)

All he would say in response was that I’d only get the call if my name was picked. I decided not to ask him how he’d know my name since I never gave it to him and all I ever said is it’s not “Mr. James”. I knew he meant that it’d go by my number.

As I was getting angrier and angrier, I actually stepped out of my house so that my kids wouldn’t hear the profanity I knew I’d be about to start using. I had to tell him at least three or four times more that I didn’t want to get a call, even if my name was drawn, and he eventually “got it.”

I suppose I should mention that my caller didn’t exactly maintain a calm demeanor while on the phone with me. When the fact that I didn’t want a new security system finally sank in, despite the fact that I’d been saying it for easily five or ten minutes by that point, he begrudgingly agreed not to call me for any reason.

He ended the call by saying something that effectively was trying to make me feel as though I’d had an argument with an old friend, as though it was some kind of loss that I wouldn’t be hearing from him.

That call is a classic example of how not to do a sales call. It’s unfortunate that I don’t have a recording of that call.

If I get a call in a few weeks telling me I won a free home security system, I’m going to be furious. Time will tell….

Oh, and before you ask why I didn’t just hang up on him, well, you can blame my parents for that one. I can’t hang up on anyone.