lpt use a fake employee to handle solicitors
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r/LifeProTipsu/needverbs (40312)

The company that I work for has a manager, her name is Alicia and she doesn't exist.

Alicia handles EVERYTHING.

She is accounts receivable, she is the owner of the company, she is the operations manager, warehouse manager, fleet manager, parts department. There is nothing Alicia can't handle.

She has her own direct line and email address.

Whenever an obvious solicitor that we have no business with calls, we transfer them to her voicemail (she's very busy and often out of town) and give them her email address.

She is our most valuable nonexistent employee. Everyone needs an Alicia.

I especially love when solicitors call a week or so after being given her contact information and lead with "I spoke with Alicia just the other day, wanted to follow up". Oh you did? Wow. Crazy.

Edit- it's important to note, someone at our company is responsible for monitoring her emails and voicemails to make sure that nothing actually important is missed

Comments (1277)

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I was an office manager at a night club and I found out people would ask for my name when they called and then use it to try and get in for free. So I started telling them my name was Nadine.

If they tried to use Nadine's name at the door to get in, the doormen would say, "That bitch? She's lucky she didn't get arrested. You're HER friend?" The backpedaling was pretty fun. I happened to be out there one night when it happened. Guy went from being Nadine's besty to barely knowing her.

Love this.

So I could have used hissyfit to get in??

Red carpet treatment if you did.

The carpet is red from all the blood of people who tried to get in for free

Exactly. And that's the reason Nadine got fired

That bitch. She's lucky she didn't get arrested.

Don't forget the full name just in case. I've heard hissyfit32 has a real bad rep. Only works in thete cos she's like childhood friends with the boss or something.

We had a Leonard who went by Len. If anyone claimed they just talked to Leo, we knew they were dirty fucking liars.

Classic Nadine.

People tried this sort of shit at frat parties in college too. I was the recruitment chair at one point and I would occasionally get suspicious phone calls from someone saying they're interested in rushing the house when we currently had a party going. Never got cold called like that otherwise.

What's rushing the house mean?

"Rush" is basically the process/period where people join fraternity/sorority houses. Typically at the start of the quarter/semester. There's events where people meet the members of the house and at the end of the events usually the houses will vote and decide to extend offers to join (usually called "bids") to the people who "rushed."

Basically people were just pretending that they wanted to join the house at the next opportunity thinking we'd open our doors immediately to them like we were born yesterday

Very strange. Thank you!

I dated Alicia in high-school. Glad to see she's doing well.

From Canada

She goes to another school. You wouldn't know her.

My favorite stupid thing my husband has ever done was to pretend to have a girlfriend in Canada, only to later have a girlfriend in another town and have no one believe him.

Was this pre-marriage?

He tells his wife about all his fake girlfriends so she never suspects his real one.

He would never cheat on me, the dogs are registered in my name. Well, I guess he wonā€™t cheat on me for the next 9-14 years.

The dogs you know about. :)

Found you! Stumbled across this randomly

Heh, yeah Im still here :)

Oh hi, didn't see ya there.

Aw, yall know each other?

Those that aren't in Canada

Because of the implication

Aah! Thereā€™s nowhere for me to run! What am I going to say ā€œnoā€?

[deleted]

Oof, that hurts. Because of the implications

Is....... Is your home life ok?

It was a joke. Weā€™re actually really happy and the fake girlfriend was an embarrassing thing he did in high school when his friends were dating and he wasnā€™t. He didnā€™t know the fake Canadian girlfriend thing was an internet joke and didnā€™t catch the sarcasm that was being thrown back at him. Heā€™s a very sweet man. He does love our dogs a lot though.

Oh!

That's good to hear, so often we see the opposite. Our partners loving our pets like we do is a massive green flag to me.

Wholesome. I think.

Hahaha šŸ˜­ omg thats brilliant... šŸ˜‚

Not to worry you, but those are just dogs. Easily replaceable and not really a plus in the first place. I'm sure he's not cheating on you and has better reasons than a stupid dog.

It was a joke. Heā€™s pretty crazy about me so Iā€™m not worried. He would not easily replace the dogs though, he really loves them.

The real pro tips are always in the comments. Lol.

"Haha, you're so nice to me, it's almost like I'm your girlfriend"

"..."

"John?"

"..."

"WAIT, WHAT!?!?!?"

The old "I have 50 parking tickets behind the windshield".

Wife's boyfriend here. No.

Having a fake girlfriend keeps the wife on her toes.

I also choose this guy's wife's toes

Yeah that's only like $10 for ten minutes... why not

Just make sure she has a pedicure before you stick them anywhere.

I'll also chew this guy's wife's toes

Lol... if only

Hey my girlfriend is getting rid of all her old dresses, too big now. Want them?

This makes me smile but I don't recommend it.

Ouch! Surely the dresses will fit again, 8 or 9 months down the line?

Yes. He was in high school.

Thank you.

FYI You're talking to the "husband"

Asking the real questions right here.

Plot twist. Sunbear is the husband.

I shudder to think of the stupid junior high locker room bragging of the pre-internet era that would be instantly and embarrassingly debunked these days.

She goes to another school. You wouldn't know her.

My neighbor tried this when we were in a 10th grade class once. Talked about his girlfriend and used the ā€œshe goes to a different schoolā€ line. Then he got scared after seeing me jump in.

ā€œMiddle school. Kennyā€™s girlfriend goes to middle school. Sheā€™s in 6th or 7th grade and in special ed. Her mother has me and the other older kids in the neighborhood alternate babysitting her to keep Kenny away. Heā€™s a predator.ā€

I actually felt bad blurting it out in the moment and immediately after. But now, 20 years later? I should have shamed him more, because he went on to be a full blown pedo.

Clearly it was you fault for putting the idea in his head /s

Hey now, I was Catholic. It was the boys that needed to run and hide.

Also /s, just in case.

You obviously drove him to become a pedo. /s

This is apparently the common retort. It must have been my boyish body that turned him on.

Oh dang. This was going to be an absolutely SAVAGE burn on Kenny.

Plot twist, you gave him the idea and it's your fault he now has a house across the street from a middle school. I hope you are proud of yourself.

Kevin? Is that you?

I actually literally long-distance dated a girl from Canada throughout most of high school. Learning about the "girlfriend from Canada" cliche led to a whole lot of sudden insecurity.

Do you have a glamour shot of her in your wallet?

It's in black and white and came with the frame.

That is the joke, yes.

Her name is Baron. She's from the baronies. She's my romance partner.

We met at camp.

No... she's real, damnit! You've got to believe me!

We've got three kids together... why won't anyone believe me?

Her name is Alberta, she lives in Vancouver.

She cooks like my mother and sucks like a Hoover.

I email her every single day

Just to make sure that everything's okay! It's a pity she lives so far awaaaay...

When she turns over in bed We have to help move her.

He was a skater boy

He said see you later Alberta

more specifically, Niagara Falls.

Classic Breakfast Club.

Hang on. This whole thread I was starting to think his girl was from Vancouver.

NIAGRA FALLS! Slooowly I turned... Step by step...inch by inch

She goes to a different Canada. You wouldn't know her

What do guys in Canada say their fake gf's are from?

As an Alicia from Canada I'm deeply amused by this whole post

That was Eh lici Eh.

Her name is Alberta and she lives in Vancouver.

My cousin actually dated a girl from Canada, and I didn't believe she was a real person for over a year. Turns out she is real and now they are happily married and living in Canada together.

Oh, I wish you could meet my girlfriend. But you can't because she lives in CANADAAA!

Her name is Alberta, she lives in Vancouver!

Met her at Niagara Falls.

No, she's never even been to Canada...

I love her, I miss her, I can't wait to kiss her,

where it's colder!

She cooks like my mother and sucks like a Hoover

From camp in Canada šŸ

Are you sure you were dating her? Maybe she was just being polite.

Was that the girl who was friends with that Nigerian Prince?

ā€œShe cooks like my mom and she sucks like a Hooverā€!

Where does this actually come from?

Did she also go to a different school?

Sheā€™s Canadian so yeah

Way up in Torontario

LAAAAAAAAST week she was here, but she had the flu.

Her name is Alberta, she lives in Vancouver.

Where do Canadians say their totally real girlfriends are from?

Catfish High

Did she used to make all the decisions back then too?

ALICIA GLASS, George's sister?

Pre-teen me was disproportionately annoyed by this. Like, ā€œCome ON, Jan! This was the best you could come up with?ā€

Amateur. I dated Alicia my entire life

I worked for a company that was two names, let's call it Smith & Jones, Mr. Smith's great great great grandson ran the company when I worked there and so many people would try and drop, oh I went to school with Jones... Funny that because Jones sold his part in 1905

She was just laid off.

Is Alicia going to be the new r/BobbyVanetti

Oh you did? Wow. Crazy.

That cow STILL owes me $20!

It's cool I dated her first bro.

Omg me too! So great she still lives in Canada. Sheā€™s still got it bad for me but Iā€™m sure she liked you too šŸ˜‚

I actually made up a girlfriend named alicia in middle school. She went to another school.

I had a crush on Alicia , she never gave me the chance

Hahahaha incredible. We dated the same woman! This kind of thing happens with lady's men like ourselves. If you're ever hanging with your boys and want to reminisce about this weird coincidence shoot me a video call and we will all have a laugh. I expect the same from you.

In high school we had a non-existent guy named Gordon Bennett sign up for field trips and extra-curriculars. Apparently he was in the marching band.

Mildly off tangent, this is a plot from an early issue of the Star Wars comics. Every time Lando needs an alias he uses the name of his most hated enemy. Hopefully when the law follows up on the case, his enemy gets all the heat.

But now that heā€™s running with the rebellion, his enemy is being hailed as a hero

What kind of monster hyphenates high school?

Wait... no. I really did date Alicia.

Butā€¦ I also dated her in high school. šŸ¤”

Is she Susieā€™s sister?

Dude she was so f#*$ing clueless though.

similar thing my company did, but we made it much more obvious.

one of our guys did a pretty spot on impression of Arnold Schwarzenegger and we set up a voice mail for "Arnold".

any time we got a salesman calling, we told them they needed to speak to arnold and transferred them to arnold's voice mail. we checked the left messages weekly and listened to how they reacted. some salesman left voice mails laughing, obviously getting the joke... others sighed knowing they've been had. pretty light way to end a week while also making sure nothing important was missed.

after getting transferred to arnold a few times, even the most persistent salespeople gave up.

I hope one of the lines was "GET TO COPIER"

"I'll be back... on Monday, November 21st."

So stick aroundā€¦ until Iā€™m back in the office to return your call.

Still better would have been Monday, November 18th - that's in November 2024

"Who is your daddy, and what does he do?"

Many years ago, my company did the same thing- set up a phone extension, vmail, email for our Director of Facilities and Production. His name was Johnny Unitas. Football fans may recognize him as a famous quarterback for the Baltimore Colts, from about 1957 to 1973. Somebody in our company could do a decent impression of him which we used for the vmail msg. Useless vendors calls were directed to that number.

This went on for a few years, until one day......Johnny Unitas showed up at the main reception asking to speak to our VP of Manufacturing and VP of Logistics. He was a senior rep for a local supplier we had considered using, and he had called to try to get an appointment to discuss their product line. He got a laugh out of the fake voice mail greeting, and decided to show up unannounced and try to get a meeting.

We had been seriously looking at their products (not me personally) and he left a bunch of boxes of samples; I seem to recall it was industrial fasteners. The manufacturing engineers liked them, but pronounced them "functionally identical" to the current supplier, so why bother changing ? "Yes, but these are 20% less expensive". We switched to Johny's company.

Side note- he would come to our offices every 60-90 days, at which point all the females would singnal "Johnny is here !!" . Even in his late 60's he was considered charming, charismatic and handsome. Many panties got wet when he came to visit.

Holy shit, I really really wish I hadn't given my free award yesterday, because you, my friend, have earned it!

"IT'S NOT A TONER!"

That reminds me of the Arnold's Pizza Shop bit.

Nine millimeter BOOlets. And cauliflower. What the hell.. is cauliflower AnYwaay?

If you want something crazy like pineapple, I'll kill you

So leave your name, number, serial number, how tall you are, and whether youā€™re susceptible to any diseases

Maybe Iā€™ll give you a pizza, maybe Iā€™ll break off your arm.

Literally haven't thought of this for 10+ years but also my first reaction

Edit, it's definitely 15+ on second thought. Damn.

Did you ever get an ā€œIā€™ll be backā€ voicemail in response?

We once had a customer in to the garden center and claim she knew the owner. I watched my coworker Walt deal with her, as she got more and more irate as he wouldn't budge on prices and she finally left claiming saying the owner would hear about it and she would have him fired. He calmly agreed and said that the owner would be made aware of her complaints.

Walt was the owner, and he told me when she left "I've never met that woman before in my life." He had been puttering around doing his propogation hobby and repotting things on his day off when she came in while I was unloading a truck and said "I'll take this customer, you keep checking in the new stuff."

So instead of me getting to say "Well the owner is here, I can ask him." She got a grubby dirt covered guy who happened to own the place but didn't know him. She even name dropped him to his face.

I once had an exceptionally rude and obnoxious patron pull the, "I OWN THIS PLACE" move on me when he wanted another drink but it was past closing time.

I had to call my manager (the actual owner's son) over to deal with him because this guy was being unbelievably awful. My manager came over over to deal with him ans did look awfully like a security guard which is likely why said dickhead felt empowered to say,

  • "I OWN THIS PLACE! WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?"

-"Well if you're the owner, then apparently I'm your son because my parents own this place".

He was a right fucking clown. My boss managed to kick him out without much fuss by agreeing to fight him outside. He let the dickhead march right out the front door and then locked it straight after him.

I used to work at a bar where the namesake and original owner was deceased. It was still named after him, but his son owned the place.

One drunk asshole complained to the son that he would tell [namesake] about this after being cut off at closing and the son turned around, pulled the original owner's urn off the shelf over the taps, opened it up and plopped the bag of cremains on the bar and said "How about you tell him right now?"

It was a weird bar. Often after closing his son would set the owner's ashes on the bar to have a shift drink with us. But we all figured it seemed like something he'd have wanted.

Thatā€™s amazing, actually. And the having a drink with his ashes is a little weird, but honestly the sort of cheerful weird I could easily adapt to in the name of team spirit(s).

It was only after rough nights. Usually Manny stayed above the taps. But his entire family agreed that his ashes should stay in the bar.

The man held political office, but he loved his bar. I met Obama, Rick Flair, and Jimmy Carter while working there. That bar was a bit of an unofficial headquarters for the Democratic Party in Atlanta.

Often was an exaggeration, it happened three times in 3 years. Still more than you'd expect.

I was thinking this sounded exactly like Mannyā€™s while reading your above comment. Guess thatā€™s because it is.

Still my favorite bar. After a bad breakup I was there drinking so much I got offered a job. Figured I would be there anyway so might as well make money instead of spending it. Two nights a week was about 500-600 bucks. Wound up barback for two years.

But yeah, it was Manuel's Tavern.

Manuelā€™s Tavern!! Been there.

Manuel's nephew used to run a bar down the street. After we closed down we'd go get drunk at that bar. It was like a speakeasy for industry folks. If nobody knew you, you weren't getting in after closing. And we would stay until about 6 am. Because we got off work at like 3 am.

Then we'd all help that bar clean up before day shift came in.

Or we'd stay at Manny's and just write down what we drank and put cash in the register for it. Day shift rang it in.

Obama, Ric Flair, and Jimmy Carter. ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

LEt me be clear, that would be nuts. WOOO!

Oh my God, that's fucking brilliant!

If my remains were cremated and stored above the bar I owned, I would actually genuinely delighted to know my remains were being used as the complaints handling department.

Health department comes in:

"Sir, we've had a report that you're storing cremated remains in the vicinity of served food"

"What this?" pulls out ziplock of unknown dusty substance "This is from my camp fire last weekend. I was meaning to use it to give our unused outdoor fireplace some authenticity, but then a customer was demanding to speak to Dad, who we buried last year in St. Mary's, so I thought I'd put him in his drunken place with a bit of a visual aid"

"... that will be all."

Thatā€™s awesome; Iā€™d love to have a drink with the ownerā€™s ashes!

From what I heard he was pretty cool. Manuel Maloof, a pretty left bartender turned politician in 1960s Atlanta.

I guess I technically met him in person, but he wasn't very talkative, just sat on the bar and accepted a toast or two.

His ashes likely arenā€™t talkative either.

I never heard him say anything.

I once worked with a guy for three years and never learned his name. Best friend I ever had. We still never talk sometimes.

On the Mary Tyler Moore Show Ted Baxter gets into a verbal argument and the guy he's arguing with says "do you want to step outside?" Ted nods, hits the crash bar on the door, lets the other guy out, then closes the door.

Later he gets into another squabble, except when he goes to open the door for the other guy this guy politely says "after you"... Ted walks out followed by the other guy... and you can hear Ted yell "ohhh nooooo".

"No, I'm not Arnlief. Yes, I know it's called Arnlief and Sons."

Often after closing his son would set the owner's ashes on the bar to have a shift drink with us. But we all figured it seemed like something he'd have wanted.

Thank goodness Keith Richards never came in.

I used to work at a bar where the namesake and original owner was deceased. It was still named after him, but his son owned the place.

Louie's Lee's Liquor Lounge

Wally's in Orlando?

My husband was a very outgoing person who enjoyed being the center of attention. Our daughter was only five when he died, so I kept his cremains ready to watch television, travel with, and talk to. We took him to the Caribbean, LA, DC, and Orlando. My daughter has great memories of her father because lots of stories were told during Dad's appearances. I will admit that I got lots of weird looks after bringing his creamains as a class project, but that's another story. ;)

I witnessed a similar one a few years ago in this dive bar except the manager put on his best fake ugly cry and said "DADDY YOU FINALLY CAME HOME!" To the clearly younger than him guy.

He proceded to bear hug the now confused problem, and carried/shoved them out the front door while blubbering random bits of made up childhood trauma.

Funniest thing I've seen happen in a bar.

Thats some Professional conflict deescalation right there

He Road House'd him?

He let the dickhead march right out the front door and then locked it straight after him.

That's some Looney Tunes trickster shit right there, I love it!

Are you sure that wasn't an estranged brother having a real hard time being the secret Brother inside their parents bar?

My boss managed to kick him out without much fuss by agreeing to fight him outside. He let the dickhead march right out the front door and then locked it straight after him.

ROADHOUSE!

"I OWN THIS PLACE"

Hey I own this place, and I know this guy, and we have got your milk boiling just the way you like it for your steak.

Best way to handle that. Avoid a physical confrontation and make the guy feel like an idiot. Win-win.

Why make claims that are so easily debunked?

Years ago, our owner had a name that wasn't pronounced the way it looked - the number of people who always insisted that he was a close, personal friend and then botched his name was astounding.

His rule was, "if someone can say my name, they probably know me."

I used to work at a company where both the owner and the President went by shortened versions of their middle names. Think Jonathan Michael Smith (goes by Mike) and Stephen Andrew Jones (goes by Andy).

It was always a dead giveaway the few times I covered the front desk and answered phones, when someone would call and ask to speak with Jonathan Smith.

LMAO! My grandmother did the same thing. She had been married four times, but her phone number was listed in the white pages under her middle name and third husband's last name. Making it even easier to spot solicitors and scammers, her third husband's last name was Kniep. It is a German name and the "k" is not silent. Most solicitors called asking to speak to Mr./Mrs. Neep or Mr./Mrs. Nipe. If they asked for Kniep (pronounced Kuh-neap) we knew it was probably legit. My grandmother had a long list of legal aliases, so it could get confusing sometimes.

The old Gary but it's Jerry.... Nice

Polish?

Then it would just be impossible to pronounce

Ah yes Mr. Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz. Don't ask me how to pronounce it.

At least you typed it šŸ¤£ I have some idea how to say it but it's hard

Back in the days of land lines, I had a Polish friend who could easily weed out spam calls this way. They NEVER said the name correctly.

[deleted]

I worked for a company that administered education tests, and heard a story about a man from a Middle Eastern country (back in the late 90's) who called in to complain about something. The person who took the call was female, and the caller insisted that because of her gender he wanted to speak to her manager. It got interesting because her manager was also female, and it was possible to escalate the call up to the actual CEO (also female) of the company without encountering a male. I think they may have made it all the way up the chain. Dude's blood pressure must have been amazing.

I dropped in at the grocery store where my wife works as a manager. We had this goofy thing where if she greeted me, she would boast ā€œwell hello Mr PMmeyourGradyWhite!ā€ And Iā€™d reply with ā€œhello Mrs PMmeyourGradyWhite!! How are you today!ā€

So she had a customer talking to her, who was a chronic Karen and when my wife opened with ā€œGood afternoon Mr PMmeyourGradyWhite!!ā€ , Karen thought I was the store big wig and so she dropped her convo with my wife and ran over to me to voice her problem. I nodded and listened and casually asked for more information. Kept smiling and when she had fully vented her concerns I just smiled and said, ā€œI understand your frustration, but I donā€™t work here.ā€ She grabbed the employee badge from my pocket and realized I worked at XYZ Corp, not the grocery store. Wife was doing her best to not smirk. Other employees and customers saw the whole thing unfold since Karen was so vocal. Karen left in a haste. It was so great.

r/IDoWorkHereLady

Walt was such a stoner that he tried to get me to tell people I was the manager.

"Just say you own it."

"But you've been open since 1981. I was born in 1982."

"They haven't googled us."

He also had a landscaping business. He hired great landscaping architects, and made a reputation in the rich part of the.city. He swore his success was because after a job he and his crews made sure to do a thorough cleaning job.

The garden center was a loss for his wife to have a hobby.

The landscaping business made him millions of dollars. The garden center gave him room to try and play with japanese maples.

We once grew a fuck fuckload of castor bean plants because he thought it was cool they could be made into ricin.

Then the frost came and they all died.

... So you're saying your boss, whose name was Walt, was specifically interested in producing ricin?

Are you sure it was the landscaping business that was earning him millions of dollars? He definitely didn't have anything else going on? A car wash perhaps?

He also had a landscaping company. No car wash, though I did have to learn to fix a lot of fountains working at the garden center. So there was some improvised plumbing involved.

Edit: oh I get it now. A Breaking Bad thing.

No this guy built a landscaping business then opened a garden center for his wife that lost money for years. They used to throw an open house with huge amounts of food and booze every spring and fall. Deb was not a god business woman but goddamn she was an amazing cook. She should have been a caterer instead.

She did all the cooking for the Open House parties and holy shit. Everything she made was amazing.

I got roped into decorating a tree at a cultural center one Christmas and I just knew a lot about plants, nothing about interior decorating. I got paid but seeing what the designers were doing while I had no clue was a bit demoralizing. I'd have been more comfortable with a booth giving out advice on growing tomatoes.

The Open Houses were rockin though. We had prior warning. I only had 1 week to do that tree. But for the Garden parties we had months of notice so we could stage things and set up. We had path elements and shit.

Not just "here's a 25 foot loquat in an entryway, have at it."

Okay, so how do I keep the gatdamn squirrels from eating all my gatdamn tomatoes!?

Granulated fox urine. Squirrels smell a predator, they stay away.

We sold lots of things to keep squirrels away. The fox urine is the ONLY thing that nobody ever came back and said it didn't work.

Okay, fox urine it is. I figured since my dogs already pee near the 'maters they wouldn't be this bad, but I got almost nothing. They went for the peppers too, the rat bastards. No salsa for us this winter!

Fair warning. It'll smell horrible to you too. It's crystallized piss after all.

You can make a few fake dens by putting it in a couple of places near the fence instead of making a perimeter around the vegetable garden.

My veg were in a bucket rack on the deck this year so the puppy didn't dig them up. Fake dens would keep the bastards off the roof maybe...

Thatā€™s how supervillains get their start.

Walt seems like a fun guy to hang out with.

Oh he was great. He used to tell stories about rock shows in the 70s, he used to see all kinds of amazing bands. A coworker had a show, I don't even remember what instrument he was playing something he picked up doing volunteer work in Africa. Like a xylophone but not a kiddy toy.

And who did I run into at the show? Fuckin' Walt was right there cheering him on.

Like a xylophone but not a kiddy toy.

A marimba?

šŸ˜‚šŸ˜‚šŸ˜‚šŸ˜‚šŸ˜‚ Kalimba! They were big in the late 60s/early 70s, at least in Northern California.

It sounded like jilee or something like that. No idea how it was spelled though.

I went there expecting nice stories about people dealing with Karens.

And yet the first post I see is about a guy who bullied his new employee in front of the whole team. Wow.

This happens daily, and I mean that literally, daily in car dealerships.

A lot of dealers were established 2-3 generations ago and the name on the sign is for recognition, not because that person actually owns it. Sometimes it's the kids that take over, sometimes they are bought by a larger dealer or investment group.

"You knew "Uncle" Al Deitrich? Did you go to his funeral in 1998?"

Or

"The owner is a faceless ceo that never steps foot in here. We're on our third sales manager this quarter so who exactly do you know?"

The only thing I miss about selling cars and managing dealerships was being able to be an unbridled asshole to asshole customers. Dealers have no chill. If you're not buying, you're not getting polite responses.

Used to work for a dealership in this situation. The name sake had passed in the 90s. Whenever someone said they were friends with him, a simple "I'm so sorry for your loss" made for a beautifully awkward silence.

I had a boss once whose last name could be pronounced a number of different ways. One day I heard her on the phone on a somewhat heated call, and when she hung up she started laughing. The guy she was on the phone with did not realize who he was speaking with, and threw out his trump card of "I know Kathy {wrong pronunciation of her last name), and she is going to hear about this!" The boss simply said "I'll wait to hear from her" and hung up.

This sort of happened to us once, but we were on the other side of it.
My wife and I went to a store owned by my mother-in-law's cousin.
We mentioned that to the person behind the counter, hoping for a discount. His response: "oh really? I'm his son."

It's not like we did anything wrong, but my wife doesn't know her second cousins on that side. It was embarrassing.

Not the same but I'm a pretty young person living down a row of houses where the average age is min at least double mine. We have a private parking area where we own the land under our spaces. I have two spaces, but only one car. I'm usually okay with the occasional visitor to another house parking there if I don't need it. It's when people park for nearby stuff in my spaces for ages. I will usually politely point out that they are for the houses surrounding it, the amount of times they claim to know the owner is ridiculous, I like pointing out I am the owner.

Time to get a half-finished boat, project car, or motorcycle and leave it in that spot.

I also own two spots and have a 1969 Honda Tr50 in the extra spot. The engine is seized up and the tires are flat. It hasn't been registered since the 90s, don't have a title for it. Bought it for $50.

I have never ridden a motorcycle but I own, well like 3/4 of one.

But it occupies the space.

This is priceless.

We will get a lot of calls at our office from various sales people in our industry, itā€™s very normal for these reps to reach out. We will only talk to two of the reps who we actually do business with, and our front staff know this so any others basically get told ā€œsorry theyā€™re in a meeting, please send them an email or I can take a message.ā€ Most reps are cool with that, and a few of the polite ones weā€™ve reached out to when we need something the ones we usually use donā€™t provide.

However, sometimes these reps like to try to play our front staff and say theyā€™re working on something with us, or had talked to us recently. You do that, youā€™re instantly blacklisted. They will never get past our front staff, they donā€™t get our email addresses, nothing. Iā€™ve never understood why they think lying will help them, it 100% will keep them from ever getting our business.

We once had a Scottish lady call from BBC to ask if we knew any exterminators with "interesting personality" because they were looking to make a new reality show. I put her on hold, yelled to Walt across the shrub yard, and he said "Ask them if they ever met an exterminator. They're ALL fucking weird."

We also once had a young couple bring their children thinking that Habersham Gardens (Walt retired, the garden no longer exists so it should be ok to name it) was a botanical garden. He spent an hour showing those kids around and answering questions and telling the kids fun facts about the plants.

He had no chill for adults, but he was a new grandpa so he was happy to show around kids.

Edit: He also partnered with a local animal rescue to spay and nueter the barn cats. One of my job duties was to catch stray kittens, get them used to people, and adopt them out to customers. "Ok so that's 3 abelia, hold on, something is chewing my shoelaces." Bend down for a second "Oh it's Dusty. Here hold this kitten while I complete your transaction." After the card cleared "Yeah he's an orphan, the other cats keep attacking him so we keep him here in the cashier shed. You can take him home if you want to."

The other cats did occasionally eat a fucking kitten. I once went in the barn and found four small paws like it was Dutch ruled Congo.

I unloaded like 10 kittens on customers.

Sometimes I miss the times where my response to "Can I speak to a manager" was a shit eating grin.

If I owned a business, Iā€™d name it something like ā€˜Ralph Wilsonā€™sā€™ or some similar ficticious name, just so I could desl with the folks who say ā€˜I know Ralphā€¦ā€™

Had customer tell me they grew up with the owner of my privately owned grocery chain, and I should give them rotten veggies for free (against policy). I'm like, that's nice you should call them. Of course they don't have a billionaire with a home in the Hamptons on speed dial.

Pam Beasley, looking around: "I- I'm the office manager. That's right, I am the office manager!"

ā€œW-weā€™re not interested! Weā€™re NOT INTERESTED AT ALL!ā€

Lol perfectenschlag

The one for the family construction business is Herbert or Herbie. Herbie's been in their employ since 1996, and does literally everything in the company.

He got his start when there was an exceptionally pushy steel sales rep who kept calling despite being told no, we were perfectly happy with our contract with (huge US-based firm that odds are good you've heard of) and we weren't interested in changing to (small China-based firm with no web or other presence).

He's also our code if we need to get someone out of a situation pronto. "Herbert wants you in his office, NOW", "Herbie's on the phone, needs to talk to you now", things like that. "Oh, shit... I got to go. Herbie's my boss."

This makes me think of Roger, the employee at the bookstore I used to work at. "Roger, Line " meant "suspicious activity in department". Roger was the name of the female turtle the store kept in the back area by the time clock, customers did not see her.

Now i picture a turtle racing down the aisles to get to ___ department.

Slowly and steadily

That's about the pace Roger moved at. If she's still alive and kicking, she'll be in her early 20s,which is not old for a Red Eared Slider, but is not young for a pet turtle in less than ideal conditions.

This guy books

Just put the turtle on a Segway and you've got a good set up for a Paul Blart: Mall Cop 3.

Have the turtle stunt double for Seagal and no one would notice

We had a similar one for violent/belligerent customers.

Jackie, (whatever area). Basically some customer was going nuts and you'd better be ready to fight like Jackie Chan. Normally that would get called and the person would call the cops right after- just warning to get the hell away from there.

[deleted]

Security or that one absolute unit of an orderly every decently sized hospital seems to have.

Yup, ā€œpaging Dr. Armstrongā€ to the ER, stat!ā€

ā€œMr. Valentine, can you please come to the office?ā€ was our schoolā€™s code to go into lockdown back in the day

Worked in a now defunct grocery chain in the 90s. We used a PA system in the store connected to various wall phones with 2 lines for in store communications. Whenever there was a shoplifter in the store, they would call the stock crew to pick up line 3. It meant everyone in stock crew, management, and whoever else was in the mood to tackle someone to run up to the front and be prepared to get physical. It was a lot of fun. There were some shoplifters you felt bad for, but most were scuzzy. You would be surprised how much shoplifting in grocery stores is a coordinated group effort.

Would've loved if you actually said, "Jackie Chan, ___" .

When I was a wee lad working retail we had two loss prevention employees. One guy one girl and it was also Mr/Mrs Cash to suspicious area.

Suspicious activity at a bookstore? Well, what could that be? Some vermin dogearing pages, perhaps? A Lookey Lue browsing thru magazines right in front of the "No Browsing" sign? Or, worst of all, using the restroom without a purchase?

Suspicious activity at a bookstore? Well, what could that be?

Speaking as a former bookstore employee, harassing customers, masturbating, and stealing were all things people got banned for. And then there was the guy who ate an insane number of peanuts and left the shells all over the restroom floor. Repeatedly.

I was just jesting. I thought the "suspicious activity" meant thievery, but damn, whacking it in the stacks? Was this at a regular bookstore or an adult bookstore?

I was just jesting. I thought the "suspicious activity" meant thievery, but damn, whacking it in the stacks? Was this at a regular bookstore or an adult bookstore?

A very everyday regular bookstore.

Theft, mostly. I say bookstore, but know it was a college bookstore, so we had more than just books; art supplies (some very expensive and high quality), non-book supplies for all sorts of classes, and books, which were rarely cheap.
And the occasional (and thankfully rare) sorts of things the other responder commented with.

I know what you meant (as far as the thieving part); I was joking. But thanks for the update.

But what if someone name Roger applied to work there?

Idk, sounds Fully Loaded.

Number 53 is where his name came from!

I was thinking number 31 lol

As long as Herbie isn't bugging you for love and riding again going bananas in Monte Carlo.

HaHa! We are old.

Yep. I loved all the movies. My kids like the very last with Lindsay Lohan, but find the others boring.

Theyre pretty much the same with Condorman.

(Which, interestingly enough, is next to impossible to find in North America, unless you have a region-free DVD player.)

I didn't like Herbie, even back then as a kid. I would be afraid to watch one today.

Kurt Russell had to have been in one of those. I remember he seemed to be in every third movie that Disney released around that time.

He may have been in every 3rd movie, but not a single Herbie.

I hear his a love bug.

Itā€™s Saticoy Steel isnā€™t it?

Beautiful. See, African-Americans have such a rich history of unusual names.

Chinese steel sucks too.

Oh, I know. They tried to pass 41L40 as 1050 in a sample- 41L40 is leaded steel.

Shit like this is why people are rightfully scared of anything built by Chinese/in China. Even if the thing theyā€™re making is a solid design, they can still fuck it up by using the wrong materials. Shit like that can get people killed.

Ya like, I feel for those Chinese sailors gotta post on the shitty China war cruisers. šŸ˜¬ šŸŒŠ

Yep.

We took a few hundred pounds of half-inch rod as a sample order, and I gave it to our fab shop to play around with, see how it did. The complaints were epic.

  • Clogs grinder wheels
  • Won't weld cleanly
  • Bends far more easily than it should- very much a problem for structural supports, railings, and so on.

Had it analyzed, told the analyst we were told it was plain AISI 1050, half a percent carbon, balance iron. Carbon, sure, but also manganese, silicon, sulfur, chromium, and about 0.20% lead.

The funniest things here is that a solicitor in my neck of the woods is a word for a lawyer...

OMG that makes so much more sense!!! I thought it was odd they were being approached by so many lawyers!

"There's a chance I might have committed some ... Light... Treason" -arrested development

You can read all about it on Bob Loblaw's Law Blog

You sir are a mouthful

Are you not hearing yourself?

you old blowhard

I'm afraid I just blue myself.

I prematurely shot my wad on what was supposed to be a dry run, so to speak, and now I'm left with a mess on my hands

That's a low blow, Bob Loblaw.

Bob Loblaw lobs law bomb on law blog

Why should you go to jail for a crime someone else noticed?

I have got the worst fucking attorneys

So I grew up in America and have now lived in the UK for the last 7 years and I was also confused about all the lawyers. The brain is funny man.

Yep here in the US (probably Canada too) a solicitor is a sales person trying to drum up business for whatever annoying company they work for.

Nope. Canada a solicitor is a lawyer. Rarely used term overall.

Every company in America has solicitors

Not every company, but yeah most companies in the United States do have at least one employee who at least occasionally, if not full time is a solicitor. It doesn't make them not annoying though.

Lawsuits everywhere !

Oh! Now it makes much more sense. They're on about cold calling.

We also have "No Soliciting" signs on our doors to at least try to deter salespeople that show up at the physical location. Do you not have some kind of sign like that?

You think they READ? My neighborhood has one up and I have one on my porch. We still get people coming by.

If they catch me at a bad time I just open the door and point at the sign then close it again. lol I did get an internet guy to take me off his list once by saying we don't believe in the internet, it's where the devils live and we won't have it in our house. That was fun.

I hope you did it while holding a smartphone in your hand, then shut the door before they could question it

I think I DID have my phone in my hand. I was just so pleased with myself I have forgotten!

I play dumb and say either my husband is the man of the house and Iā€™ll check with him. Or say we own that same business but thank you.

Just scream at them like you're possessed by some unholy spirit. Just shriek until they walk away. It's completely free and legal.

I like to just stare awkwardly and only say the words "Not Interested". It's fun because you know they're trained to not take that for an answer and to not be the one to end the conversation. But if you never shut the door and only reply to every question with "Not Interested" they have to eventually give up and walk away. It's amusing to see how long some of them go.

I've had people tell me to just answer "I'm sorry, Mr/Ms X is dead." to be taken off the list. But my mom won't let me do it because it's bad luck...

Might try the bigot way one of these days.

My mom's actually dead and some of them don't stop.

Oh my word... Is there any way to be free of these guys?!?

If you literally never answer the door they'll eventually stop. same thing with mail/email/phone calls.

I had this happen when I was in 3rd grade and selling things for a school fundraiser. Guy pointed to the sign and asked if I could read. Yesā€¦ but ā€œsolicitorsā€ was not a word in my vocabulary as an 8yr old.

whoops, yeah I only get rude with adults. Kids are just doing what they're told to do.

The sign is a deterrent and legal protection. But they only mentioned it because they were curious what the sign might say if not ā€œno solicitingā€.

Sounds like when we were in the middle of a huge family get together and the census guy showed up. We live in the country with a fenced in yard. We went over to the fence to talk with him but refused entry to the yard because we had multiple large dogs running around and don't need the lawsuit. I guess since we were protecting him we were bad people. The first thing he wrote was "yard encased in barbed wire fence". Dude? That's chicken wire. No barbs! I have kids! Then, he asked if all the kids were ours. Honestly, there must have been at least 25-30 kids of varying ages and races. My husband said yes at the exact same time I said no. The guy looked at us and my husband said, " They are all mine, but not all her's. There are 6 different mothers.". I mean by this point, why not mess with him. He asked for their names and ages. We said we couldn't remember. We just called them all Bob. It simplified things. He again asked about ages and I said they were all born between the 14th and 15th retrograde of God. He actually wrote that down! He asked me to spell it for him! We saw his paper when a neighbor came up behind him on a horse and scared him. He dropped the clipboard, ran to his car, and locked himself inside (I guess he thought horses could open car doors?). I looked over his clipboard before giving it back. We waited for him to leave then all had a good laugh.

When people come door knocking I usually just smile and say, "I'm terribly sorry old chap, I don't speak any English, cheerio!"

I've tried pretending I only speak Spanish despite not looking the part. Problem is I live in Texas so lots of the door knockers do speak Spanish, then I have to admit I'm not actually fluent in Spanish.

Me: "Lo siento, no hablo Ingles"
Them: something in Spanish.
Me: "...Yo estoy...busy" shuts door

I'm a Belgian and although the country's officially bilingual (actually trilingual with german), most people aren't. So my bilingual grandmother answers french speaking callers in dutch and dutch speaking callers in french.

It works very well with french phone callers, since they're often situated in Morocco or Algeria so dutch is like Klingon to them and my grandmother gets crossed off that particular company's list.

I keep telling myself I'll do that since I'm passable in dutch, but I keep forgetting to.

I have some cousins who had the opposite problem. Their father is Spanish but never taught them the language. So with a name like Gonzalez, they get spanish-speaking phone spam all the time, but they don't speak a word of it.

"No Cold Callers" or similar

ā€œNo Agentsā€ in a thick Irish Accent

What have you got against Asians?

They're just a mob of crooks!

Donā€™t you know itā€™s illegal what youā€™re doing?

We have ā€œno hawkersā€ signs

Here a cold call is when you answer and nobody is there.

A "cold-call" in the US is calling a person or company, typically to sell them something, without having any sort of business relationship with them in the past.

it boggles my mind that people still try to sell things door to door, legitimate or otherwise. Everything I could possibly need could be here by tomorrow morning but sure I'll listen to a stranger at my front door convince me I need a water softener

I feel the same, what's the point

Not gonna lie but I had a water salesman (you those water jugs thingy you dispense water hot or cold) and I just pretend to care and the person wanted to sell it to me today I was like "Nope not happening" so I just told the person "I'll look over this later thanks" and closed the door.

I also used to get JWs too but that was when I was in a different state and then I saw one like 2 years ago before COVID started doing there shitty recruiting like always and yes they came up to me too and handed me their lighthouse booklet and just threw it away while they wasn't looking.

I met someone who's job was to go door to door getting people to sign up to be contacted when the company was next accepting customers - who on earth signs up for that?

My family always had a chatty kid to sic on the solicitor. We must have developed a reputation because after awhile no one came to our door except for girl scouts selling cookies.

"no lawyering"

If only they listened! And if they listen to the sign they call instead.

Iā€™ve been telling various payroll companies ā€œnot interestedā€ for a year now. How many times do you think a small company is wanting to make that kind of major change?! Now itā€™s the credit card processing companies. No, it got completely messed up when we switched last time (6 mos ago) I am NOT doing that again.

Now as soon as they get into their spiel I just say ā€œnot interestedā€ as Iā€™m hanging up.

"Soliciting" in UK speak is something that prostitutes do.

I doubt signs stop them

Soliciting still means the same thing in the UK ("to entreat or petition" according to the OED) but these days it's much more commonly and specifically associated with prostitution. Soliciting being the crime of offering certain kinds of sex work (where often it's not the act itself that's illegal, but the act of advertising or openly offering it in a public setting).

You wouldn't often see "no soliciting" signs, not because they wouldn't be understood, but because people would think of the sexual connotation first. Here's what a similar sign for the British market looks like.

Solicitor (as lawyer) stems from the older, broader meaning of "to entreat or petition" (via French soliciteur), same as how it's used for salespeople in the US. The lawyer being someone who entreats or petitions on your behalf within the legal realm, instead of the commercial realm.

Same, and I was thinking if you're having solicitors calling you then it's probably not something you want to fob off to a non-existent person.

Oh, same here. I assumed OP's employer was getting lots of legal threats and thought this was normal.

As a company lawyer in the U.K. I did read this and think that giving out fake names of the business owner to requests from lawyers/solicitors was pretty ropey!

Cold callers makes a lot more sense.

Itā€™s only after reading this comment that Iā€™ve realised they werenā€™t talking about lawyers. Was quite confused!

Oh my gosh I was so confused about why you needed a fake person to deal with lawyers. I thought this lpt is pretty fucking dodgy

Yeah this was confusing as fuck for a moment there

Jesus, this makes sense. I was thinking if you've got solicitors getting in touch then it's probably a bit fucking important

Oooooooohhhhhh!!! Lol.

wait what does it mean in OPs case?

Sales people. Cold call sales, door knockers, basically anyone that contacts you unannounced and wants to sell something.

And I'm like " having a fake person giving instruction can't end well'

Then what do you call a solicitor?

Yeah... a solicitor: somebody who solicits.

Can mean anything!

SC?

Europe, most likely.

UK specifically. A solicitor is a lawyer that deals directly with clients, a barrister are the ones that are in courtrooms doing the questioning and shouting "objection".

B-but Phoenix Wright does both...!

There are plenty of legal systems where the same people do both jobs, but in the UK they are very separate professions.

Yeah, TIL. I just thought it was funny, haha.

Especially considering the newest game, where it's about his ancestor in old-timey Britain.

Isn't that game explicitly set in Meiji era Japan...? I only played the first bit before getting distracted, so maybe I'm remembering wrong, haha.

Well, yes and no.... More around Edo, I think. And you go overseas and... Shenanigans happen.

Well worth the play-through. It's insane.

Ah, that explains it. I definitely enjoyed the bit I played, and I loved the other games, so one day I'll get back around to it! Cheers :)

Although weirdly solicitors can also appear in court just like barristers, and barrister can now take clients directly too. The boundaries are much less clear than they were 25 years ago.

UK specifically.

And Ireland*

Australia too (and potentially other colonies?)

Nope! Law student here, the terms are interchangeable in the U.S. as well.

Ditto for Australia

I believe there is a Solicitor General at the federal level in the US, and his job is mainly to represent the government in front of the Supreme Court.

We have Solicitorā€™s Offices in Georgia. They handle the misdemeanor crimes.

Weird I always knew the word to mean someone who was trying to sell something.

It usually does in the northeastern USA, at least in my experience.

/r/usdefaultism

Not an unreasonable assumption, given that "neck of the woods" is an American phrase.

Is it? Iā€™m British and Iā€™ve used that phrase

Used to be, in the 1800s. Picked up internationally in the late 1900s.

And plenty of Americans call people mate, but I'd assume someone online using it is commonwealth rather than American. Anecdotes don't mean much.

Where I'm from, a neck is the part of the body that connects the head to the torso

This should be top comment.

I was rather confused as well

I finally get it. I was thinking why would a lawyer be calling and they are not handling it correctly. We would call these a sales call.

Thank you for this. I was also wondering why they were fobbing off lawyers.

Yeah I was very confused for a while until I figured out solicitor means telemarketer.

My dad (rip) used to get all kinds of calls soliciting all kinds of BS. This is 20+ years ago. I was over at their house with my son who was about 3ish at the time.

Phone rings, dad answers. You can tell he was annoyed but then this gleam came to his eyes. He says ā€œhold on, heā€™s right here. Let me get him for youā€ and hands my son the phone.

My son told whoever it was all about his lego, his rock he found, his friend from preschool then he goes ā€œwhat happened? Hung up?ā€

Man we were in hysterics.

Somehow when I was about 3 or 4 a credit card was opened in my name. Someone bought a 3xl super expensive jacket and my dad got a call about the card not being paid. They said the cardholders name and he said that's impossible that's my son. The person insisted on speaking with me. So he gave me the phone. The only person I spoke to on the phone at that point was my Granny. So little me assumed it was granny on the phone. Wouldn't you know I just talked their ear off for a few minutes. My dad took the phone back and they just said they'll cancel the card and clear the issues up.

This reminded me of something my dad used to do. When solicitors would call (let's say my dad was named John), he would, "Hold on, let me get John for you." Then he would change his voice and say, "Hi, it's George, how can I help you? Oh, you want John, hold on, I'll get him for you." Then another voice would come out and he would be Robert or whoever. This would go on until the other person hung up.

It was particularly good when he would push buttons between "people" like he was transferring the call.

We once had a lawyer call trying to find my sister (who was going through some drastic medical issues). An ex bf of hers had listed her on some debt and had someone forge her name. It was all bs and we knew she didn't owe it. This lawyer, Jeff, calls us looking for her contact info. He explains who he is and we ask for his address so we can send him the paperwork proving it wasn't her. Jeff says that's not good enough, he needs to talk to her. We explain that isn't going to happen, but we will send the paperwork, which we did. A few weeks later, Jeff calls again. He got the paperwork but still wants to talk to her. Not happening Jeff! So Jeff decides that he's going to be a jerk. He yells at me that he is a lawyer legally trying to collect a debt so he will call me everyday until we give him her info. I calmly hang up. The next night, he called again. So I answered and made small talk. How's your day? What's the weather like? Watch any good movies lately? Kept him on the phone almost half an hour while I "looked" for her info. Nope! Couldn't find it. Maybe you should call back tomorrow. This was when you paid for long distance by the minute and he was out of state. We would put the kids on the phone to tell him about cartoons, we would say we thought we found it, then set the phone down and walk away. Gotta give the guy credit, he was persistent. He called for almost a month straight. Dumb thing was that if he would have just opened the package we sent he would have realized he didn't need to talk to her. Everything was there, which he found out when he finally opened it. Some nights, I sit in the dark on my front porch holding a drink and I wonder: how is Jeff doing? Does he think about us?

When I was about 3 years old, I was audited by the IRS. My mom took me down to the local office, opened the door, and sent me in. I guess everyone had a good laugh and they got things straightened out. Nicely done, mom!

My mom used to do that when she'd get people asking for "the man of the house" lol

Iā€™m so glad so many of yā€™all had similar experiences. That hilarious man!

Let's not make hiring 3 year old a lpt.

Good one though.

I didnā€™t say anything about paying him lol

Goldfish crackers and apple juice can't be that big a drag on the HR department?

I am really bad at painting things, and some crafts.
So when anyone asked about them, I tell them my 10 year old grandson David did it.

Iā€™m stealing this. Iā€™m 35. It will be hilarious.

You have a grandson?

Nah, heā€™s gonna tell them Steve Austinā€™s grandson painted it. Thatā€™ll screw with them.

Loretta Lynn became a grandmother at age 26. She pretty much spent the rest of her life not recommending that.

I do now.

Could be a nephew or a goddaughter.

Has baby at 17, child also has baby at 17

Grandson at 35 not totally implausible

I'm pretty sure he just said he was going to steal one

My former boss had 3 grandchildren at age 40.

omg- I think I critiqued a painting like this! I remember seeing a new painting in someone's house whom I had just met. The painting was naive, but quite good. I asked her if she had done it and she responded that a 9 year old had done it and I was shocked. "Your niece's art is quite sophisticated for a 9 year old! The color choices are excellent, the sense of depth is amazing and the brush strokes are super confident! It looks like the work of an adult, not a child. I hope you encourage the child's parents to get lessons for her because she may have a gift!"

Our is named Doris shut.

We had Jimmie, and one of the upsides of my job was coming up with more elaborate backstories for Jimmie. Like he was struck by lighting and refused to come to work if there was rain in the forecast(kind of a true story from my college days). Also Jimmie was Amish, so there were certain things he still shunned.

"You'll have to talk to Jimmie about that sir, he doesn't believe in phones so get a GPS and go to 48Ā°52.6ā€²S 123Ā°23.6ā€²W and set up a fire at dusk. I'll make sure he's watching for the smoke signals."

And make sure none of the clothing you wear contains artificial material.

Is she the one that married Ben Dover?

I think that was Ina Morata.

Helen Wait

As in "Go to Helen Wait?"

Me: Oh you need to see Helen Waite. Sol: Helen Waite? Me: That's right, go to Helen Waite.

As a soon company owner, I'm gonna steal this.

This is beautiful

Love this but who is Sol lol

My cat handles a lot of stuff for my little company.

Any time I get a solicitation or someone I donā€™t really want to deal with they get her name and email address.

Sheā€™s good at what she does, which is nothing

Mittens is the consummate professional.

"Ah, yes, the person's email you want is whiskers.meowington@busybullet.com"

Youā€™re not that far off, lol.

Except she has a very human sounding name.

Ellen Ripley.

Love it. We should have named our dog that. Her birthday is 4/26, but we didn't have the paperwork with her DOB until after we decided her name.

I'm an admin assistant. When I get these calls and I'm bored, it's fun to play with them - especially when they claim to know the owner personally. I'll usually start with "Oh! You know Billy?" (Owner does NOT go by Billy) and listen to them go along with it. It's actually pretty handy, because some telemarketers sell information to other telemarketers - so whenever I get a call from a new person asking for "Billy," I immediately know they're full of it.

I loved when they claim to know someone and they donā€™t even pronounce their name correctly. Thatā€™ll get you transferred to our sewer division real fast.

I set up an extension number that, when a call is transferred to it, simply plays "never gonna give you up" on a loop forever until the caller hangs up. I once had a phone scammer call back and try to make a song request!

I wish we could do that but I work for the people so that would be heavily frowned upon. It means I have to be passive aggressive.

I mean, just use regular hold music then. See how long they'll hold for.

Basically, set up a call queue that has no agents and set the failure destination (where the call goes when nobody answers) to point back to the queue. Make sure it allows callers to join an empty queue with no agents. Then just transfer calls to the queue number.

My sister does this. She works in a VERY male dominated field so uses a shortened form of her middle name that is exclusively masculine. Think like Elizabeth to Eli rather than Samantha to Sam.

But sometimes people get ahold of her legal first name. Sure fire way to know she did not give you her name.

And ironically the phishing training emails that her company sends out to test their employees always address her as her legal first name. She says it makes it even easier.

Your sister's middle name is Phyllis??

So a lot of people are criticizing this but as a small business owner this is incredibly helpful.

I have a lot of vendor contacts that do very specialized things. I don't use them too often, but every once in a while I need a special widget that's hard to get and I have a small list of vendors that might be able to source it. The problem is, if you're in their system, their stupid Salesforce (or whatever) database often requires their sales reps to reach out quarterly, annually, etc. Multiply that by 100 vendors.

And "take me out of your system" isn't an option. I need to have a sales rep assigned to me for the day that I do make that phone call.

There's 10 000 companies that believe they have the next best plan/scheme/pitch and the only reason you're not a member is because you haven't heard about it yet. 9 900 will fail and be gone on two years, having succeeded only in wasting your time.

From a micro economics perspective it is actually a crucial function to determine what the market wants. From a business owner's perspective it is just frustrating to carry half the cost of their failure.

When all you need is a knife

Everyone needs a knork! You're not living in 2003 without one!

A poop knife

Everytime this dissapeaes from my immediate memory someone reminds me of this, the coconut or the box

It's finding the plan of your dreams

My general rule of thumb in business was that if someone needed to advertise, or spend money to cold-call chase you as a client, it was a bad sign.

So I sell supplemental insurance, literally every company Iā€™ve sold to is glad they did once they took the 30 minutes to an hour to let me go through the 2-3 presentations/info collecting sessions, because itā€™s literally only what their employees want to buy, and it costs the company nothing to offer it. Tons of small businesses get to offer short-term disability, denta,l and vision through us that otherwise wouldnā€™t be able to.

Problem is, itā€™s a good, beneficial product with zero word of mouth appeal (literally no one talks about insurance, and youā€™re not going to spill to a competitor for labor how youā€™re offering dental and short-term when theyā€™re not). So, I have to cold call, and I get that itā€™s annoying to deal with all of us, but it really is the only way I can get the information to the people that can use it.

So, I can respect that, and it's a very sensible offering.

But like I said, it's my general rule of thumb for solicitors.

It's good for probably 90% of cases, which for making business decisions is actually pretty good compared to what you get expending resource for a more detailed review.

Now that said, IMO, if a business wants to offer ANY insurance to their employees, it makes sense that this would be the time and place to introduce the supplemental offerings to employees to add on to their package. So my question would be, when that occurs, why isn't that happening then?

Because they donā€™t know about us or what we really do. Thatā€™s literally what my job is: explaining what supplemental insurance/benefits are to business owners

Yup, I accidentally used my real phone when I first opened my business, 5 years later after I shut down I still get calls once in a while.

My phone number used to belong to the owner of a contracting company. I still get several calls a week for him.

Bob Saucolitis was my first employee at my last company. Named after Tube sock my cat. I think it's more common than people realize. Fake it til you make it blah blah

I have a title that makes it sound like I decide contracts and vendors for my company but I don't. I get dozens of emails a day about the latest and greatest everything, and they'll try everything! They keep at it and keep at it. I totally get it.

It's helpful to anyone, really. I used to work in a commercial area as the office manager... I can't even tell you how many people would come by everyday and try to sell us things. Anything from staffing to landscaping, pallet recycling, light bulbs etc. And they don't take no for an answer, but I think if they get a card they at least get credit for the stop. It's a win/win and less of a waste of time.

We have rental properties and my poor mum will sit there and entertain the Brinks or Solar Panel salesperson forever because they won't leave her alone and she doesn't want to be rude. They will not leave unless they have someone else to harass or you give them a follow up.

If it's as easy as passing along a business card with a fake person on it, hell I'll make them right now.

That's why you delegate/filter. Have someone below you responsible for fielding the calls, if it sounds like something that might actually be helpful (someone else who can make that widget at a more affordable price, offer better timelines, new vendor that you don't know yet) have them send it up to you.

Even if it was an option for you, in America there is absolutely no requirement for them to not solicit a business if requested.

People are criticizing it? Are they mad that they keep getting transferred to Alicia only to have read this thread to find out she doesnā€™t exist?

I have everyone trained to say I'll be in next week. Hell, even I say I'll be in next week. The reps that I actually deal with know how to contact me. Everyone else can get the cold shoulder

We have an "Alicia" too, his name is Tim and he even has his own voicemail so we can transfer calls to it where it sits until the box is full and we just delete all the messages.

We have Eric from IT, who signs off the bad news emails. We deal with end users who sometimes get frustrated, so it helps.

We used to use Jake in IT. Customer calls being an ass: my name is Jake, how can I help you? Then we sign the ticket off as Jake so our level 2s know they were being an ass when they called and can prioritize appropriately. If a customer calls in again saying they were taking to Jake, we knew they were giving the last person a hard time. It was so helpful in dealing with problem people.

Pity the eventual real hire named Jake who now has to go by Alex.

Alex was the earlier version of the character (a gender neutral name), but an actual Alex got hired and everyone defaulted to Jake from state farm for some reason.

Quick change of pants, no problem!

Similar idea: One of my husband's former students once worked in Customs / Border Protection on the U.S. / Canada border. He said it is illegal to mark on or deface anyone's passport, but if someone gave an agent a hard time, sometimes the agent would lay a piece of paper over a particular page in the passport and make a mark that was universally recognized by other agents. The mark would be incised on the page but barely noticeable. If the traveler caused problems at other borders, other agents would look for the mark and find ways to delay or hassle the person.

The tragedy is that Tim probably gets fake!paid more than Alicia for not doing the same work. Unbelievable. /s

It took me a moment to realise Alicia wasnā€™t employed to dodge lawyers. I was wondering what your company was involved in that required a full time employee to evade litigation.

Exactly, this felt like a step below making your dog in charge of the company in case you get sued.... Then I realized the meaning

Found the British person! Now back off or I'll get my "barrister" after you, mate.

Calm down now we don't want to bring coffee into this!

Big coffee is a little teaā€™d off.

Australian

Canada and Australia are subsets of Britain, so I'll take it.

So is America

To an extent, yes, but we went out of our way to be like "eff you" to the British. Like, we refuse to speak British, and we also don't put the queen on our money. Australia and Canada still like the queen (and I guess technically king) and use them on the money. From my understanding, we never did, because although America IS a subset of the British, we exiled ourselves completely and are trying to act like we never belonged to them. Australia and Canada are fine with being honorary British countries.

Ireland, though, I'll give you that - Ireland has also been trying to distance itself like we have - but they have indeed been picking up British as their main language.

Oh you guys don't speak the language of British in America? šŸ˜‚

Nah, we speak American, street, and redneck (a variant of which is "texan").

America is just an old British colony, same as Canada, Oz, NZ etc. You speak English, use English weights and measures (ish). "Liking" a monarch has nothing to do with it. It's to do with the commonwealth.

From my understanding, we never did, because although America IS a subset of the British, we exiled ourselves completely

Wow, do you know so little about your country's history? Have a read up on colonial times, Boston tea party, war of independence

Shit Americans say.

Roger that, counsel.šŸ˜

What does the local governing body have anything to do with this malarkey

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"Ignoramus" is the name of a lawyer too actually. A dumb lawyer from a 15th-century play. And he was named after an actual legal term from that era, "ignoramus" literally meaning "we don't know" in Latin, which was an option for a verdict.

I know that.. I was continuing the trend... I'm from Surrey, so hardly ignorant.

Whoosh

Just because you think you "got" the joke, it doesn't make it so, so the whoosh is on you and the Surrey character.

Wow. So you have a go at someone for making a joke when the word is spelled differently but you donā€™t even know how to spell the sentence ā€œyou are ignorantā€ properly. Got it.

The spelling is perfect - you just missed the joke.Again.

Found the British person

Or Irish, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand...

All British.

r/ConfidentlyIncorrect

More like you missed the joke.

Jokes are supposed to be funny

Since when?

You have an argument for the commonwealth countries, but Ireland will see you laid out in a ditch before being called British.

British

The term you're looking for is not American.

Alicia isn't emplyed; she's deployed.

If I was a 'solicitor', I'd absolutely have a 'no soliciting' sign prominently displayed in my office.

In the UK, a solicitor quite literally solicits (or instructs) a barrister to represent a client in court.

So that 'no soliciting' might be somewhat counterproductive.

Aware. Poor attempt at humor apparently.

we used to tell people to email the Special Projects And Management mailbox at our company domain, then end the call by telling them to use the initials to save typing all that into an email (SPAM)

I worked at a concert/events ticketing office on a University campus 20 years ago, and we had the ā€œXavierā€ file. I think it was for declined credit cards on mail-in orders.

We would call and if we had to leave a message we would say, ā€œCall us back and ask for Xavier.ā€

When they called back, we knew exactly what they were calling about and where to find their order details. (Yanno, back when we had actual physical files in a filing cabinet.)

ā€œXavierā€™s not in right now, but I can help youā€¦ā€

As someone who has worked frontline at a small business, gettin 10-30 in person solicitors/week got pretty tiring. This works as these guys job is to never take no for an answer. For those who say this doesnt work dont understand its their job to bother people until they say yes. They play a numbers game kinda like scam callers.

Back in the 90s my dad was the only employee in the state (he did industrial combustion equipment sales, big territory with relatively low customer density) and so would get solicitors calling a lot. They'd want to speak to someone in charge so my dad always gave them the number for the home office -- in germany.

Weirdly enough they didn't actually call germany to try and push fax paper or whatever it was they were selling.

Back in the 90s

Probably because calling long distance was expensive.

I commend and support your efforts.
I worked for a company where we had an email, phone, and voicemail for Milo Kwolfie. He was the frog that lived in the basement of the office. The voicemail was one of us with just our nose pinched, it sounded fake. Yet every week we would have some joker on the phone asking to speak with the president because "Milo" directed them. Or some dude walking in the door, dropping off literature, because "Milo" was interested.

I especially love when solicitors call a week or so after being given
her contact information and lead with "I spoke with Alicia just the
other day, wanted to follow up". Oh you did? Wow. Crazy.

Our best was a dude who SWORE that he spoke with Milo for an hour about things and was going to die on that hill. Nothing like telling them that its the name of the frog who lives in the basement of the office.

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Corporate Accounts Payable, Alicia speaking. Just a moment.

Sounds like somebody's got a case of the Mondays!

We have Helen Waite. When ever someone cold calls us to sell something, we tell them to go to Helen Waite.

Perfect name! I like Helen already.

Heh that's a good one

In the 1990s my company had a booth at trade shows. As part of the bundle for buying a booth, we got a certain number of trade show admissions, often a quantity greater than our number of employees who'd be going to the show. So we invented a few fake employees like this.

Thirty years later, we're still getting junk mail and sales calls for those fake names.

These names have been bought and sold and traded by who knows how many mailing-list and sales-lead companies.

HAHAHA my old boss did this. He went to high school with a special needs guy back in the day. He was always nice to him, and the guy would show up at the store a lot and talk and hang out. So whenever someone would call or come in looking for the owner heā€™d say, ā€œDon isnā€™t here now, etcā€. Fast forward about 5 years later, and heā€™d get more mail and phone calls than most of the employees. Salespeople would even call and say they lost Donā€™s cell phone number, they did a bunch of business with him in the past, and that they were personal friends tons of BS to try and get tot the owner. It was priceless.

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We have elderly customers who do something similar. They will tell us that their husband has passed and to take his number off of the account, but to keep his name there, that way if anyone is checking their mail or something, they will see a man's name.

There's a simple alternative to all that. Subscribe to the NRA magazine and you'll get plenty of gun-related junk mail. People will assume granny's packing heat.

I feel like that would invite burglars looking to steal guns

Well presumably the guns are either in a safe or granny's hand.

also like - as a gun owner, there are a lot of things I'd rather spend my money on than giving money to the NRA, like hiring a weasel to chew my nipples off

imagine breaking into a house and getting murked by somebody's meemaw

I had someone who was so persistent I eventually lost my patience with them and told them that I was so fed up with them calling that I was going to make it my mission in life to ensure that neither this company nor any company I work at for the rest of my career ever used any product or services provided by theirs and hung up. Still got called (by a different rep) a couple weeks later. An Alicia may be the only way to handle the d-bags.

I work in legal IT. Tech sales are the worst. I got spammed by a tech sales guy who scoured LinkedIn for anyone in our tech department and used our standard email address format to send emails to us all.

I responded that I didnā€™t appreciate him spamming us, and as long as Iā€™m working for the company he will never get our business. I than proceeded to block his domain for the entire company on the mail server.

I had a recruiter who found me on linked in then emailed MY WORK EMAIL to ask me if I wanted to apply for a job (which I was vastly overqualified for and paid less than half of what I currently make). My work email is not on LinkedIn, must have done the same standard format spamming thing. Some of these guys are just embarrassing themselves as well as wasting everyoneā€™s time. I like the blocking of the entire domain!!!

Edited for additional info and fixing autocorrect

I had a recruiter once call me at work. I worked in a customer service job in a call center, I didn't have voice mail or a personal line and my phone was recorded. I just got a message to call this person at this company. I thought it was a customer. Nope. I was not happy.

You made sure the emails are bounced with a snarky message, right?

lol nope. I need to start doing that

I got tired of Yelp ad salespeople calling me (even after I caught them lying on a recorded line and filed a chargeback), so I blocked their phone number on my PBX system. Now when Yelp calls, a robot voice says they aren't allowed to call and then the system hangs up on them with a standard "boop beep biip your call cannot be completed as dialed" message.

I worked for a company that had vendor that did a similar thing. All sales calls were told to talk to Bob who was only in the office on Tuesdays. Then they wouldn't answer the phone on Tuesdays.

Ours is named Helen Waite.

As in, "This guy wants to give a sales pitch to someone." "Oh, he can go to Helen Waite."

We got Patrick. Patrick literally just left --- his wife is in labor. He's gonna be out for a while. We'll take your business card, though.

We are usually frank about not accepting solicitors, but sometimes we need Patrick to step in when the solicitor immediately starts out with overly deceptive behavior.

We are usually frank about not accepting solicitors, but sometimes we need Patrick

Poor Frank knows he's second to Patrick.

Patrick's assistant, if I'm honest

All these commenters saying "learn how to say 'no'" have never owned or ran a business.

This LPT is actually pretty genius on a few levels. Namely, the amount of intel that marketers use to determine the decision maker of a company is insane. By listing Alicia as head of multiple departments, you've drastically reduced spam to actual decision makers.

For those that want a more legit LPT, use mimecast.

Source: was a marketer for an ABM firm.

I generally say Iā€™ll take a message, and then donā€™t. Any time they call back I keep saying the person isnā€™t available and offer to take a message.

Eventually they take the hint.

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Do you ever sit back and wonder if what you do for money makes the world worse?

Oh how I wish more people would think about that every once in a while..

It depends on what youā€™re a salesperson of. Thereā€™s services that people genuinely may be in need of, and there are services that are predatoryā€¦ there are a lot worse ways to make a living than making cold calls and delivering good/worthwhile on the back end.

very curious, since you're here.

What would a "proper no" look like?

I'm sure it depends on the salesperson, but a simple "thanks, we're not interested" should work. It's often met with a "can I follow up in a (month/next quarter/6 months/etc) to see if anything has changed" to which I'll say, "sure" or "no thank you I don't want to waste your time"

If you firmly tell them "no, we're not interested," it should take care of most of them.

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Ah, I see, you're talking about the "hints" vs a clear "no".
I gotchu now.

Respect. I love my role as a salesperson and have done it from door to door slinging telecom to working with the worlds largest FinServ and tech companies.

I fully understand why people in non-sales roles dislike solicitors, however they donā€™t tend to realize that sales teams drive revenue. Someone had push the product so the business stays open, and it certainly wasnā€™t the head of IT.

That said, truly great salespeople are focused on problem solving, and that can take a long time for the need to develop.

Agreed, ITT are many people whole havenā€™t been in outdoor sales beforeā€¦ my industry is small and there are pushy salespeople who are predatory, and no one likes doing business with. But calling just to connect or try to get a laugh in the off chance you can be of service down the line pays dividends over time.

So you're saying the quickest exit path is to say yes then hang up?

I own my business and answer all the phone calls. We are also located on a busy commercial road facing the street (but not a store) so we get a lot of door-to-door salesmen. I've definitely learned how to say no and sometimes I have to literally force close the door in their faces. I'm usually nice at first just to see what they are about but when I say no it means no.

I own a business. Both work phone and personal phone get bombarded by calls from sales people. An aggressive pissed off No gets them off my back. Secretary I have is way too nice, usually answers them with responses like ā€œThank you for calling us but the moment we are not in need of those services but I will call you back if we ever do and will Have your number saved!ā€
I donā€™t know how many times I had to have wrestle the phone out of her hands to tell them no, we donā€™t need that. This is the same secretary who smiles and jokes back when my guys (blue collar dudes ) flirt with her and try and make moves on her. Once they leave she complains to me that they are creeps and what not, and I am like, I just watched you flirt back for the last 30 minutes. I talk to my guys about that, and their answers is always ā€œwell she always smiles and flirts backā€. She claims she does it to not be rude, and that is why they come back and flirt. Itā€™s a constant fight I have, that could just be avoided if she simply told them no I am not interested in you and the majority of them will back off, just like salesmen do when I do the same I donā€™t judge people for being passive, but in business you just canā€™t be like that. I know most women are naturally passive and donā€™t want to come off as rude and I respect that, but business is a rough and aggresive world.

If she says "no, I'm not interested," most of them will back off, but too many will ignore it and continue to harass her, and it only takes one man to stalk, assault, or murder her.

You do know women have to be careful how they say no because there can be repercussions? I've had straight-up 'No. leave me alone/not interested' or just 'No' ignored, treated as a challenge, somehow interpreted as 'lecture time on why I can't mean no', or threatened. Some of these from sales people. Placating someone is a tactic we learn when we think our 'No' will not work.

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Yeh I get it. Usually menā€™s aggression is backed up by the ability to use violence. But I can assure you 90% of men will back down when confronted aggressively.

Sure but if sheā€™s got ten men flirting with her that means she has to guess which one is the one that will lose it.

Wow. Have you ever considered that, as the owner of the business, you can and should address the sexual harassment and hostile work environment that exists and that your admin person keeps telling you how they feel In hopes that you will do your job? It sounds like a parody that would be shown in a horrible HR video of what not to do. Your business sounds like an awful place to work. Truly.

Didnā€™t I just say I addressed them with them? I have fired guys as well. Construction workers, landscapers, blue collar guys are for the most part felons, ex cons akd a lot of junkies. It just how it is, it is fucking horrible place for a woman to work and I said I battled with that a lot. The blue collar industry is just like that, half of the companies we compete with are downright cartels. I hope it changes in the future but it wonā€™t change anytime soon. Any woman who is in this industry canā€™t be passive. I can fire half my guys or I can lay down the law. Its easier from your side of course but try running a contracting business in the border where half your guys are straight out of prison and those are the only guys willing to work. Yeah itā€™s a horrible place to work at times but that is where the money is at.

It wonā€™t change anytime soon at least partly because people in power (you in this case) continue to make it ok through their actions following the belief ā€œthat is just the way it isā€ and ā€œit wonā€™t change anytime soonā€. Iā€™m not sure what you think you know about ā€œmy sideā€ which enables you to determine that itā€™s easier, however, what I will say is that it is extraordinarily difficult to go against things that are patently wrong even though they are ā€œjust the way it isā€. The fact that you end this with ā€œthatā€™s where the money isā€ drives it home for me that you are willing to allow absolute fuckery to continue for money. Sadly, not shocking at all, just another case in point for me to understand where we are as a society, for that I thank you.

Let me go fire all my guys then. I expect you at 6 am bright and early ready to do 12 hour shifts. Be the change the in the blue collar world you want to see

The characterization of the entire blue collar work force as misogynistic idiots beyond change is totally on brand.

Also, not that it matters but I do work from 6am to past 6pm most days so I suppose Iā€™m already ā€œbeing the changeā€, that said, there is no way Iā€™d work in an environment like you described unless I had no viable alternative, as was the case in the military.

That actually makes you and your company sound awful. Aggressive on the phone, wrestling the phone out of employee's hands. Are you kidding? You're so worried about fending off sales people but at the expense of being a dick to your staff and giving your company the rep of "angry owner". And the beautifully sexist comment about women being passive. No, fuckstick, it's called being professional and polite. You know she doesn't like being flirted with and going along with it isn't consent, it's not wanting to rock the boat and lose her job. If it's happened more than once and she's told you about it, why would it happen again? The guys being dumb the first time, fine. But after that, that's on you and them, not just shrug "well she responded." It's a workplace. None of you sound like you're treating it like one except her.

That's a lot to draw from a short comment, you doing okay?

Profesional and polite in the contacting and blue collar world lol. And I didnā€™t shrug off, where did you get that from?

As a female admin type, fuck right off. You know what happens when I finally lose my patience with a persistent sales rep and give them the assertive "no"? I get called a bitch, told I'm a nobody and they won't take no from anyone but the boss, and the call volume doubles from them trying to get through to someone else. You know what happens when I'm less than cordial to the laborers and skilled workers? They get aggressive, and I stop feeling safe.

Long experience has taught me that there are only 2 ways to be a woman in a male-dominated workplace: be passive and friendly, or be a ball-buster. I'm not hot enough to pull off ball-buster without being called a bitch, so I'm passive and friendly. And that's just how it is.

Let your secretary do her job, and tell the guys to leave her the hell alone.

And so what if you get called a bitch? What is the alternative? Be nice and get ran over? But hey at least they did not call you a bitch right? I saw this a lot on the military. When female leaders were commanding and tough they were called bitches. When they were not, soldiers took advantage of them and they were called weak. As a woman you are going to lose either way, might as well stand up for yourself and donā€™t let people run you over Women in the workplace alreayd have the odds stacked against them, itā€™s up to you to find out what is more important to you. I hate to break it to you but you are either the ā€œbitchā€ who people know they canā€™t fuck with it or the nice girl they like but know they can take advantage of. If you can find a happy medium then that is perfect but sometimes you canā€™t.

You sound like a total POS ngl

You sound weak ngl

Gasp! The person who doesnā€™t understand what itā€™s like for women thinks that the person criticizing him is weak? Who could have predicted thisā‰ļø

You sound weak because you are criticizing someone who is for women being assertive and standing up for themselves. You are promoting passiveness because you are too weak to stand up for yourself and want others to do it for them and expect the same from women. Weak af

Dude, the other person already explained it to you- women have physical safety issues that we as men just don't.

If they assertively say "no, I'm not interested" the vast majority of guys will chill out and leave her alone. The other, small percentage will follower her to her car and teach her a lesson. It's a shitty roll of the dice they have to do.

Worked at a place with about 6 employees, including the owner, and an office cat named Milo. We always forwarded sales calls to Milo's voice mail.

"You've reached Milo's voicemail. Sorry I'm not in the office right meow."

I think Alicia needs a raise!

And Iā€™ll hold onto the money until she returns.

Whats a 20% raise for someone getting paid $0?

20% more. Obviously.

You're right. She deserves 50%.

A taller chair?

I'm in Germany. I work for a raw materials producer. Today i got a random sales call from a US number (area code 203) from obviously an IP Phone from someone in India or Pakistan. They knew my name, my job title and my work number, but not my email so I honestly don't know where they got all that and not my email because I don't publish my work number anywhere but it's printed on my business cards, but my email is also there so idk. They went on about something fresh solutions to improve our business margin and whatnot. I repeatedly tried to tell him i am noone to talk about this, as i am low level staff. But he retorted that my job title says manager, and i told him yes in germany everyone is a manager, as i manage several customers.

He went on and on about his services, which he wouldn't answer what specifically they were (e.g. was it software? A book? Consultants?). He wasn't answering any of that, he just wanted my email to send me a brochure.

Seeing he wouldn't quit i asked where did he get my information from, which made him stutter, and then i asked where is he really calling me from and he said "yes sir well" and hung up.

If he was a salesperson, he failed hard. If he was a social engineering scammer, he failed harder.

I always have a slight suspicion that these calls are ā€œphishingā€ tests from my employer.

I don't have an Alicia but I routinely answer my phone and tell the caller I'm in a meeting right now but would be happy to take a message and call them back when I'm available.

Itā€™s all fun and games until you hire someone named Alicia

give a callback number and have it be the rejection hotline

ā€œHello, this is NOT the person you were trying to call! Youā€™ve reached The Rejection Hotline becauseā€¦ā€

I did this starting in college. I even made a fake name tag for the employee. Soon, she started getting phone calls. I took her to a few other jobs. She still receives letters at one from 3 years ago and sheā€™s still a very active employee.

Someone called me on Tuesday about getting a test copier installed. I said my boss was out. She said she talked to him yesterday (Monday) and he okayed it. I said she didn't talk to him yesterday and I know she didn't.

His pregnant 33 year old wife collapsed dead of an aneurysm during dinner on Sunday. He wasn't taking any calls from a stupid copier salesperson the next day.

We have an "employee" like that, we named her Karen because why not.

I would like to know what the Job Title, of the person who checks Alicia's emails and all, is.

The operations manager. It looks a lot like deleting all the emails at once, but he knows what he's looking for in the emails.

The voicemails never get listened to.

Everyone needs an Alicia.

Am an Alicia and even I need an Alicia.

Omg I have a Robert and he does the same thing. Best employee I've ever hired!!

I always answer the phone ā€œCrazy Tonyā€™s Crazy Pizza, this is Crazy Tony!ā€ in a very rushed sounding voice.

I often do the same "Banana Joe's Shake Factory"

My friend dated Alicia in HS we didn't know her cause she went to another school

Sounds like a lot of work to avoid telling someone no.

Better LPT: Learn to be able to tell folks no and stick to it.

For most things, yeah. But for the spammy sales reps that will just continue to call back every week until the end of time no matter how many times you tell them no, giving them a useless name/number can't hurt.

With a lot of salespeople, saying no just makes them redouble their effort.

Any response is a good response to them. Turn nos into yesses.

With email I just block and report spam. With calls I just hang up once I realize it's a salesman

We've had an insurance rep come in three times a year for 3 years. He only recently changed his approach to once a year. I think his entire job consists of coming to our office, dropping off pens and business cards, and leaving.

So you're saying he's the pen delivery man.

Yes, a lot of people like that have expectations of how often theyā€™re supposed to visit places on their development list. They also can either reduce or remove you from their development list altogether if you just ask them to. Sending them to a fake employee is a good way to ensure they will keep coming by your office.

ā€˜We are really not interested, please do not contact us again, and take us off any internal list you have for leads and prospects, thank youā€™. And 95% of these people will never return.

As someone who works in sales, this. If I canā€™t reach a decision maker, Iā€™m going to keep trying until the decision maker tells me no.

Otherwise I might be throwing away a good opportunity.

We donā€™t do it to be annoying, we do it because itā€™s our job. Work with us, weā€™re not there to piss you off, and taking 60 seconds to hear a pitch then saying no is so much easier for you

Most of the ones I get aren't 60 seconds but want us to attend an hour-long demo. Depending on the time of the year, I get about one a day. June through September, I get about 10 of these a day. I guess the good news is it is mostly via email.

taking 60 seconds

I've never heard a 60 second sales pitch. It's usually 20 minutes, in person, a hand-out, and a prop at minimum, admittedly anecdotal.

hear a pitch then saying no is so much easier for you

Is it? Or does the rationale for the "no" have to be make sense or otherwise be acceptable to the salesman?

If I say no because of "xyz" - are you then going to challenge me because your technical data or personal experience/knowledge contradicts my rationale? After all - its your job right? You may be leaving an opportunity on the table if you don't use this chance to inform the potential client of pertinent information that would lead to a more informed decision.

Also, while a no may satisfy the salesman personally in the moment - am I really expected to believe that I'm not going to hear from you next year, next quarter, or next month when higher ups want to push a new product, service, or iteration or a new district manager wants to focus on new business?

Don't get me wrong, I don't intend to shit on sales but the way your comment reads kind of puts the onus on the decision makers to just shut up and deal with it because it only takes 60 seconds and a "no", and that just doesn't align with my admittedly limited experience.

It comes off as entitled. Who the hell is the salesperson to demand 60 seconds (more like ten minutes) of my time?

I've never heard a 60 second sales pitch. It's usually 20 minutes, in person

Probably because you don't tell them no firmly enough at the start

Either pay the sixty seconds to impart how severe the "no" is or spend it accumulatively across years of return calls and visits.

You are sadly mistaken if you think a single no is going to stop all calls and emails for more than a quarter or two at most.

You're sadly inundated either way. If you say no it's a quarter or two at most. If you acquiesce, it's more

Frankly, if I get a third from previously unanswered email sales pitch, I mark it as spam. Once could be an accident, twice is on purpose, three is annoying.

I work in legal IT. Tech sales are the worst. I get spammed by a tech sales who scour LinkedIn for anyone in our tech department and use our standard email address format to send emails to us all.

Fortunately we use Mimecast and I can just block the domains of spammers. I owe sales bros nothing. Not a second of my time. My day is busy enough as it is without dealing with this

That's part of the trouble. The decision maker is never going to take the call. Ever. That might be part of our problem, but it isn't a priority for the decision maker, and the csr sounds a whole lot like someone working at the front desk paid to take calls and nothing more, because that is exactly who took the call, and in no universe are they going to pretend to be the decision maker, nor do they have the authority to decide what the needs of the company are.

Someone else put it more succinctly, the person answering the phone is powerless. The person who's job it is to make the decision doesn't care, so transferring to a non-existent party is the best we've got.

the person answering the phone is powerless.

Nah, my job is answering the phone and I have the power to tell people no. I do it all the time, no repeat solicitation

I work on business development, so I have to make a lot of cold calls as well. Please just tell people like us that your company isn't interested. If you still receive calls after that, that's telemarketing harassment, and it's illegal. If you send us somewhere that doesn't exist, our protocol is to keep trying until we hear a yes or no.

Best thing to say is "I spoke to the management and they told me they're not interested in talking to your company."

How about adding a category for "I'll call you". If I need something for a design then I already know more about your product than your typical sales guy. If I tell you that I want a specific system then I have to spend an hour with my rep explaining why the dozen other similar parts won't work in the design it just wastes my time. I also don't need you to stop by every 2 weeks after you change reps in my area to give me the same presentation. Looking at you Keyence...

This is such a bs tactic. Learn to know when youā€™re getting the run around and just stop. Some people have a hard time saying no. It will save both yourself and the person/company youā€™re bothering a lot of wasted time and stress. I started a b2b business in early 2021 and my sales approach was to find out their needs, give them a call a quick pitch, then send one follow up email. If that doesnā€™t work move on. Chasing people down is pointless.

"Hey you've been here 20 times, I'll give you a contract if you throw me a big discount." The tactic of repeatedly trying the same company is a proven succesful tactic for both the vendor and company. I have personally given contracts to said vendors. It's not about how the receptionist feels annoyed by it. It's a transaction between business owner and vendor. Of course the business owner wants vendors fighting over your contracts.

If you think chasing people down is pointless you would be a terrible salesman. Might as well have started your post with "I know nothing about this industry but...."

Trying to reach a decision maker isnā€™t pointless

Trying to reach a decision maker isnā€™t pointless

Trying to talk to one of the dumbfuck reps that this post is specifically giving tips on how to avoid definitely is.

No, dude is certainly not the one being difficult here. He's giving a pretty good rundown of how it works. Various companies I've worked in have given large contracts to people after giving them the runaround for months. A whole bunch of people who don't know much about the industry chiming in here. What if you get the receptionist who doesn't know jack about the specific bearing lube you're pushing, if you're lucky and reach the right person, boom, new contracts and everyone is happy. Happens all the time. Salespeople are both annoying and extremely helpful when you need them.

Thankyou kind stranger, this has been a lonesome thread šŸ˜‚

As a sales person this happens all the time. Literally last week I had a lady hug me and say how excited she was to get started.

That was after I spent 3 weeks trying to get in front of her, people hear sales or assume sales and just shut down. Itā€™s fine to not be interested, happens all the time, itā€™s ignorant to not even listen.

itā€™s ignorant to not even listen.

That statement is so incredibly disrespectful to a strangerā€™s time, it is stupefyingly ignorant.ļæ¼

I know right? Like my source of income is based on how well I can show the benefits of the product, I wouldnā€™t waste my time if someone wasnā€™t interested. Setting up a fake email and giving people a wrong number is incredibly disrespectful of a total strangers time. Iā€™m glad we agree

I'm going to start leading on every sales rep that tries advertising to me now.

Haha just goes to show how worthless your time is. Good luck in life

Just saying, nothing gets sold unless itā€™s to a decision maker, so no good salesperson wants to waste their time talking to irrelevant people, just like you. That includes people who donā€™t want to buy, if Iā€™m wasting your time with shit you donā€™t need Iā€™m also wasting my time.

A simple no saves everyone more time - our interests are aligned in that

Edit: typing like an illiterate person after someone calls me a dumbfuck, ace

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This. As a business owner, if my partner or I are in need of a service, we will look for someone to do it and not be thinking about/remembering or looking through our emails to find the sales rep.

IF we can remember you because you spammed us so much, you can be sure we will not be contacting you/your company.

Additionally: if your company has one of those quote forms instead of a price sheet, chances are we will avoid you too (if we absolutely must because every provider/contractor in the industry has one and doesnā€™t provide a price sheet, we will go with whoever spams less and responds faster and in writingā€”call me to ask for particulars, donā€™t call me to give me the quote when I clearly ask for you to email it to me so my partner snd I can look it over).

I work in sales and every time a sales person annoys me I make a mental note to never do that. So, there's absolutely bad ones and ones who are way over zealous. However your view on sales is not correct. You can absolutely have a positive impact on people's lives in sales. My industry is different and doesn't have me cold calling, but still you basically said to the guy. I know it's your job, but you're a parasite. There's a reason sales reps exist. There's lots of value in B2B if needed. His last sentence is not one I agree with though. I can tell from the first few seconds of a conversation if the person even wants to talk. If they don't I apologize for the interruption and ask if they want a follow up. If they don't I don't bother them again.

Iā€™m sorry your experience with sales has been so poor, and truthfully there are a lot of scammy salespeople out there who lie and overpromise to get a sale. However, sales provides a vital role to almost every company and benefits society as a whole.

I do sales with a lot of government accounts and most of the time theyā€™re completely unaware weā€™re even an option, and when they switch over theyā€™re excited with the products/services and 90% of the time they thank me for showing what we can do.

Sales is nothing more than showing people what their options are, unfortunately you can make a lot of money doing shady stuff so it attracts a certain type of person. Itā€™s equally unfortunate we have to deal with assholes who treat us like mosquitos when weā€™re only providing a service same as them.

benefits society as a whole.

Sources needed. I think the harm done to society from bad sales people is worse than the good they might do. Look at the opioid crisis in America for example.

Someone else said something similar so Iā€™m just going to copy what I told them

Yeah, showing people theyā€™re getting ripped off and how other companies are taking advantage of them is a total waste of time in an inflationary period. Canā€™t imagine why saving money might be important to a business. 0% benefit. So glad thereā€™s no one who competes with other businesses because everyone knows when one business controls everything they charge a fair and reasonable price. No one has ever been harmed by a monopoly.

Editing to add: Sales is a dubious business for sure, there are people who lie and cheat to sell and itā€™s gross. Some markets (like medicine) should be regulated and protected from predatory sales practices. However, the majority of markets/salespeople are just regular people. Tell them no, and they move on, itā€™s not in their benefit to try to sell to someone whose not interested.

Tell them no, and they move on

Except they don't. I used to work in sales, so I got force feed all the BS about getting past no and overcoming objections. And if they do take no I'm going to get a call again in 6 months. I've even had sales people call the owner of the company to bad mouth me for telling them no. Took 5 minutes to set him straight but still I had to deal with that shit.

In today's world most sales reps are unnecessary. If you have a good website and a good product people will find you. I work for a printing company that has no sales people. We do more business and are more profitable than just about all our local competitors and they all have sales people. We are successful because we do great work, have a great website, and our prices are lower than our competitors because we don't have to tack on a commission.

I agree, some donā€™t for sure, and at that point theyā€™re not respecting your time and thereā€™s no further need to respect their time. The way some companies set up their sales teams encourages aggressive tactics, and rewards bad behavior. Itā€™s gross, when you meet someone like that by all means hang up and block. Thatā€™s what I do.

The company I work for provides a ton of services and products that are hard to summarize on a webpage. Our industry is also very competitive, we canā€™t afford to wait for people to come to us because our competition is going to them and makes it easy (which all salespeople should do) weā€™d be out of business in 5 years despite providing a demonstratively better product.

In your case though, letā€™s say a school opens and needs their paper needs met and one of these other printing companies sends a rep out and she does swell and they sign a contract with her. You know for a fact your store has better prices, a better product, and a better track record working with schools, wouldnā€™t the school benefit from knowing that? The school is blissfully unaware of the opportunity cost theyā€™re suffering because Sally Sellswell gave them a proposal and it was in their budget, except now the school band instruments arenā€™t.

I believe you when you say youā€™re easy to find online and have the best prices and are profitable. Thatā€™s awesome for you. I guarantee you some of the other printing places are ripping off some of their clients and a short respectful phone call would save them a ton of money.

Last week I helped save a city run animal shelter enough money to help provide better services for the abandoned dogs and cats that will be there this winter. Because I did my job they can run more efficiently and help more animals. They never would have known unless I reached out.

This is a prime example of not taking No for an answer.

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Lol who hurt you?

He's saying he doesn't like being treated like a lesser life form because of their job.

This isn't about masters and prey, dude. It's about your fellow living humans simply making phone calls to businesses for a living.

If you're being harassed by a telemarketer, just report it. FTC hands down punishments pretty liberally from my experience reporting companies.

Hmmm k. You keep using outdated products, inefficient equipment, and overpriced services, because you refuse to treat a significant portion of the working class as humans. Good luck with that.

Lmao stop acting like you are oppressed for being in a line of work that you chose. If people don't like sales reps that sucks for you, they aren't obligated to no matter how much "different" you are compared to other sales reps. However you have to justify what you do is fine in your head but we don't have to buy what you are selling in this context or at work.

Iā€™ll be the first one to tell you Iā€™m not oppressed, I just personally believe respecting people from all walks of life should be the norm. No need to lie and deceive people, cause that makes you no better than those salespeople you look down on.

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Yeah, showing people theyā€™re getting ripped off and how other companies are taking advantage of them is a total waste of time in an inflationary period. Canā€™t imagine why saving money might be important to a business. 0% benefit. So glad thereā€™s no one who competes with other businesses because everyone knows when one business controls everything they charge a fair and reasonable price. No one has ever been harmed by a monopoly.

[deleted]

Keep telling yourself that....

Head like an orange!

[deleted]

Would you continue to provide the world this great service for free out of the goodness of your heart? If not you're in it for the money, so you can get off your high horse.

Thatā€™s not really an argument? Would most doctors or delivery drivers, cooks, pilots, engineers or scientists keep doing their job if it wasnā€™t for money, probably not? Just because someone does something for money doesnā€™t mean they also donā€™t provide a service? Maybe soliciting in sales is rude and intrusive in many setting, but perhaps a specialized business setting (like high tech medical equipment) itā€™s more appropriate and helpful. Personally when I was managing a restaurant I kinda depended on sales people to keep me in the loop with all the delivery apps, cloud services and POSā€™s on the market. It saved me hours of time and effort in trying to keep up with trends in a specialized portion of the industry I didnā€™t have the energy to learn. Especially when itā€™s something you really only need to think about every couple of years. If we werenā€™t personally called by DoorDash, Uber eats, Grubhub and whatever the next delivery app was (the new one was Allset when I was there) we wouldnā€™t have adopted them until possibly years later missing out in tons of opportunities. Yea we could have kept up ourselves but because of sales people we didnā€™t have to, the occasional ā€œweā€™re not really looking at this timeā€ was worth the saved effort of a whole re-education every time we wanted to make a change or update. Instead we just reach out to everyone whoā€™s called us recently and had them all compete for out business giving us every version of the info right away.

We're not talking about any of the other drivers, engineers, etc. We're talking about the clown claiming he's the critical element in health care delivery

xD what, are you arguing it doesn't? Lol

Your job doesnā€™t exist without sales lol, you need them and theyā€™re never going away.

Thereā€™s a huge difference though between good and bad sales people. The bad ones usually annoy the shit out of people and donā€™t get any business, but Iā€™ve also been at a place where the most annoying guy brought in 60% of the total sales so šŸ¤·

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A firm no is the best way to get people like me to stop bothering you.

It feels like for a lot of people a "Firm" no means a lot of different things.

If the word "No" came out of my mouth at any point, that's about as "firm" as I should need to get, and if we've gotten to that point it's probably because I've exhausted any other avenues to inform you of my lack of interest in your pitch.

If you are going to push because the "no" wasn't "firm" enough and take advantage of my discomfort at directly shutting down a stranger and my reliance on hoping that they take a hint, then I might start taking roundabout ways to waste your time to avoid the interaction altogether, because I don't know what kind of answer you're looking for if the word "no" passing through my lips wasn't sufficient for us to reach a mutual understanding of the situation.

If you are not this guy, then good for you, but most coldcalling salespeople I interact with are indeed that guy.

This is excellent advice and far less work that making up a person with their own email and voicemail.

Being paid to annoy people is still doing it to be annoying.

Fuck your foot in the door. Fuck your excuses. People don't want to deal with you, no matter how basic and brief you promise to make things.

'I will keep harassing your company until my private threshold is satisfied' is why people find creative ways to make you as miserable as you have made them.

Many people do want to deal with it, luckily for me.

But youā€™re right, Iā€™ll change my career, what shall I do instead? :)

Something that doesn't pay you to ignore when people say "get bent."

You want to commiserate about the difficulties of leaving a job that people despise? We can talk.

You wanna be smug and cute about your career in unsolicited harassment? Get bent.

I donā€™t ignore people who say get bent. My point here is that my job requires me to get a ā€œyesā€ or a ā€œnoā€ from whoever is responsible for due diligence when it comes to renewing contracts. A no is good news to me, it means I can stop wasting my time and yours with calls youā€™re not interested in.

What OP suggests just causes salespeople to keep calling, which is what you say you want to avoid. Just say no to salespeople, or ask to be DNC.

GDPR is a thing companies abide by nowadays. Use it

GDPR doā€‹eā€‹sn't eā€‹xiā€‹st oā€‹uā€‹tsiā€‹deā€‹ theā€‹ EU.

Maā€‹ybeā€‹ - juā€‹st maā€‹ybeā€‹! - aā€‹ll theā€‹ peā€‹oā€‹pleā€‹ heā€‹reā€‹ saā€‹yiā€‹ng yoā€‹uā€‹r gliā€‹b aā€‹ssuā€‹raā€‹nceā€‹s doā€‹ noā€‹t maā€‹tch theā€‹iā€‹r eā€‹xpeā€‹riā€‹eā€‹nceā€‹, aā€‹reā€‹n't maā€‹kiā€‹ng shiā€‹t uā€‹p. Maā€‹ybeā€‹ thiā€‹ngs iā€‹n oā€‹theā€‹r paā€‹rts oā€‹f theā€‹ woā€‹rld doā€‹n't woā€‹rk theā€‹ waā€‹y yoā€‹uā€‹ coā€‹nfiā€‹deā€‹ntly aā€‹sseā€‹rt theā€‹y muā€‹st. Maā€‹ybeā€‹ theā€‹ huā€‹ndreā€‹ds oā€‹f coā€‹mmeā€‹nts deā€‹scriā€‹biā€‹ng woā€‹rkaā€‹roā€‹uā€‹nds foā€‹r wheā€‹n yoā€‹uā€‹r kiā€‹nd wiā€‹ll noā€‹t taā€‹keā€‹ noā€‹ foā€‹r aā€‹n aā€‹nsweā€‹r aā€‹reā€‹ deā€‹scriā€‹biā€‹ng truā€‹eā€‹ eā€‹veā€‹nts eā€‹veā€‹n iā€‹f yoā€‹uā€‹, peā€‹rsoā€‹naā€‹lly, woā€‹uā€‹ld neā€‹veā€‹r doā€‹ aā€‹nythiā€‹ng oā€‹f theā€‹ soā€‹rt...

... eā€‹xceā€‹pt foā€‹r wheā€‹n yoā€‹uā€‹ "caā€‹n't reā€‹aā€‹ch aā€‹ deā€‹ciā€‹siā€‹oā€‹nmaā€‹keā€‹r" aā€‹nd wiā€‹ll keā€‹eā€‹p fuā€‹ckiā€‹ng caā€‹lliā€‹ng beā€‹caā€‹uā€‹seā€‹ oā€‹theā€‹rwiā€‹seā€‹ yoā€‹uā€‹'reā€‹ "throā€‹wiā€‹ng aā€‹waā€‹y aā€‹ goā€‹oā€‹d oā€‹ppoā€‹rtuā€‹niā€‹ty."

And eā€‹iā€‹theā€‹r waā€‹y yoā€‹uā€‹'reā€‹ deā€‹fiā€‹niā€‹teā€‹ly beā€‹iā€‹ng iā€‹nsuā€‹ffeā€‹raā€‹bleā€‹ aā€‹boā€‹uā€‹t thaā€‹t diā€‹saā€‹greā€‹eā€‹meā€‹nt aā€‹nd criā€‹tiā€‹ciā€‹sm. Beā€‹caā€‹uā€‹seā€‹ iā€‹n caā€‹seā€‹ yoā€‹uā€‹ miā€‹sseā€‹d iā€‹t theā€‹ fiā€‹rst tiā€‹meā€‹: fuā€‹ck yoā€‹uā€‹r joā€‹b. Noā€‹neā€‹ oā€‹f theā€‹seā€‹ peā€‹oā€‹pleā€‹ oā€‹weā€‹ yoā€‹uā€‹ theā€‹ siā€‹xty seā€‹coā€‹nds foā€‹r yoā€‹uā€‹r piā€‹tch, eā€‹veā€‹n iā€‹f by soā€‹meā€‹ miā€‹raā€‹cleā€‹ iā€‹t hoā€‹neā€‹stly laā€‹sts oā€‹nly siā€‹xty seā€‹coā€‹nds. Soā€‹meā€‹ oā€‹f uā€‹s aā€‹reā€‹ juā€‹st fuā€‹ckiā€‹ng doā€‹neā€‹ wiā€‹th aā€‹ll oā€‹f yoā€‹uā€‹r coā€‹lleā€‹ctiā€‹veā€‹ buā€‹llshiā€‹t. Weā€‹ deā€‹spiā€‹seā€‹ yoā€‹uā€‹r eā€‹ntiā€‹reā€‹ proā€‹feā€‹ssiā€‹oā€‹n. Weā€‹ doā€‹n't waā€‹nt toā€‹ heā€‹aā€‹r froā€‹m yoā€‹uā€‹ iā€‹n theā€‹ fiā€‹rst plaā€‹ceā€‹, aā€‹nd weā€‹ doā€‹n't giā€‹veā€‹ aā€‹ shiā€‹t thaā€‹t haā€‹viā€‹ng toā€‹ deā€‹aā€‹l wiā€‹th yoā€‹uā€‹ aā€‹nywaā€‹y iā€‹s paā€‹rt oā€‹f yoā€‹uā€‹r choā€‹seā€‹n caā€‹reā€‹eā€‹r.

Noā€‹ peā€‹bbleā€‹ feā€‹eā€‹ls reā€‹spoā€‹nsiā€‹bleā€‹ foā€‹r theā€‹ aā€‹vaā€‹laā€‹ncheā€‹.

Ah, you live in America. Maybe you should be mad at your government rather than a European salesman if my industry isnā€™t very well regulated in your country.

But OP's way is funnier

If I cant tell them 'maybe call again in 6 months', I just give the rejection. most of the time it works, some of the times the new employee didnt get the dev list remarks and thats when you get creative in wasting their time.

Lock the doors.

Are the pens any good at least?

They are my favorite pens. The poor guy should get the hint, but I love those pens.

Ask him where they order them from. Good pens makes office life better.

And doughnuts! Don't forget the doughnuts!

In finland theres a national registry you can apply with a few clicks online. This registry is mandatory for all companies who make sales over calls. Being in this registry is marking that you are absolutely under any circumstances allowed to be called when selling anything, except, for a company you already are a customer of and have explicitly given approval for marketing calls. You dont even have to be on a registry, just say you are and they hang up and practically never call you again because then they lose their licence to do call marketing.

Of course doesnt work for international callers but they are a minority anyway.

Canada has something similar, but it's so toothless that companies will use the list to get people's phone numbers and call them anyways. One media investigation found something like 40% of call companies didn't even know the list existed, or that they could get fined for calling people on it.

Belgium has a "don't call me" list. Since I joined I've had like a 10% decrease of calls...

Do restraining orders work for businesses? Or is there a business equivalent of such a thing? If this was two normal people interacting, it would probably be considered harassment.

Again, tell them no.

"we're not interested, and if you dont stop cold calling us we'll have IT route your number into the void"

"we'll have IT route your number to the ~~void~~ Mormons"

Scientologists

Just don't answer. Or block the number if possible

I have them tell me they need to speak with someone else who has more authority. So I give them the info @ email which I also monitor. No doesn't cut it for most.

One rep selling training called a customer emergency line and contacted me through LinkedIn. There is no ā€œnoā€. I called him back to put it into no uncertain terms that he should not be attempting call people through that line in case there were genuine customer emergencies .

You can block phone numbers. Also less work than setting up and email, voicemail, paying for the line, and deleting the full inbox a few times a year...

Hold please. Let me transfer you to Alicia.

Obviously you never have to deal with 15 unsolicited sales calls a day. Ughā€¦.

I work in a restaurant, the amount of calls we get for credit processing after repeatedly say no is insane. These people don't know or understand the word "NO".

At my old job, there was an ihop franchisee that was always behind on the bills and successfully dodged the collections department by telling his FOH staff to never take messages, telling them theyā€™re paid to run restaurants, not be receptionists. Iā€™m sure salespeople got the same dodge.

You know the cliche salesmen phrase "don't take no for an answer!"

Yeah... No only works on reasonable sales people.

I hear you but you should try working in logistics and shipping and see just how many of these calls you get daily.

Right but the point is the fake employee thing doesn't stop that from happening either.

True enough, but it does cut down on your inbox and voicemail

Just saying no, take me off your list, will end those calls instead of making the sales rep go through their cadence of 10+ calls to your reception line asking to be transferred to a fake person. Someone is just trying to do their job, stop wasting everyoneā€™s time and learn how to say no.

I have worked in multiple call centers where we were required to call back people with DNC requests every other month, saying no does nothing in a lot of cases and this is a viable solution for them

Clearly said by someone who has never worked in a business office ;). Believe me, it is a steady stream, even for Dr. No.

This is also to save time for people with no power. When you're working the front line, solicitors know you have no power so when you say no, they want to talk to someone else. By giving them a decoy, you save yourself from arguing or having them call back.

Sounds like youā€™ve never worked a job that is targeted by solicitors. They are 80% of my emails and 90% of phone calls, where I constantly tell them no over and over and they keep coming. Mind you Iā€™m just a guy at a company whose info they found.

Sounds like you havenā€™t dealt with people that will continue to ā€œcheck inā€ once a month despite being told no. Some folkā€™s entire job is to push for leads. And I do mean push.

Literally just hang up on them it takes five seconds.

Or make them waste their own time for wasting yours. Better for you and more enjoyable too.

Hey do you wanna grab coffee! Hey let's schedule a demo! Hey do you have 15 minutes for a zoom call? Hey do you have anyone else's at your companies contact info so I can bug them? Hey are you still reading my emails?

[removed]

Do you think forwarding them to an unresponsive email address is going to do anything more?

As soon as people don't respond in like 2 days, people end up calling back to the main number.

Some do, some don't. It's more about getting the csr off the phone of someone paid to waste our time so they can get back to customer calls.

We can't rely on csr to know the name of every company we have business with. These calls tie them up while they connect with the manager who would normally handle the call, just to be told to put them to their voicemail, our managers are busy too, they lack the time and interest to call back these people and tell them no, when they often call back anyway so see if we've changed our minds.

Minds aren't changed. Time is wasted either way.

At least this way the csr can quickly get them off the phone instead of wasting their own time and the managers time.

We aren't a small business, but we don't have many csr on phones, so the time spent listening to a sales pitch is better spent anywhere else.

What is quicker than hanging up on someone lmao, like you don't let them get to the sales pitch, trust me the sales rep is used to it and not offended.

"Hi this is sextoysRus how can I help you?"

"Hi this is Tony from vacuum world, is the owner of the company available?"

*click

Yeah they keep calling but this method ends the call faster than anything. Once I got an email saying ā€œit seems like youā€™re not interested in our services, Iā€™ll stop calling!ā€ And it was a great day for me.

Our owner goes by I nickname so when someone calls saying ā€œcan I speak to Nicholas icantpronouncethislastnameā€ we know itā€™s not important enough for his time anyway.

A car can quickly get off the phone by simply saying ā€œno thank you ā€œ and hanging up. The fake contact provides a reason to keep trying

I agree with you. I've given people firm "no's" and made it clear I wasn't interested. That conveys a message more clearly than giving their info to an imaginary secretary that never communicates back and gives them hope.

But then you don't get the power trip from stringing another human being along.

A salesperson whose career is wasting your time. They don't like having their time wasted, get a career where being upset about it isn't hypocrisy.

This LPT isnā€™t for the people that understand and accept a firm no. Those people arenā€™t a issue because they accept it and move on. Itā€™s the ones that keep pushing for contact whatever you say or do. Mostly they are very low paid workers whoā€™s job is just to send hundreds of emails so one will eventually bite. They usually donā€™t care that they donā€™t get a reply; all they want is somewhere to send their offer once a week/month/whatever to do their job.

At the very least it will add entertainment value

I donā€™t tell them no. I just donā€™t answer any calls from numbers I donā€™t know.

We got this new invention, I swear it's revolutionary.

It's called blocking numbers and moving on with life.

If telling them no does not work just block the number or pay for a phone call screener.

Thatā€™s good advice. Iā€™ll start right now

Thatā€™s not how that works at all lmao

So your answer is somehow deter them by giving them a fake contact and false hopes? If a no doesnā€™t stop them everything else is encouragement to keep trying

That takes all the fun out of it.

When I mislead solicitors, it's because I want them to waste their time, making the ROI less attractive.

Over time, if enough of us do this, there's not as much profit in it, so it goes away.

Next time you get a spam call on your phone, put it on speaker, and wait until you get someone. Start asking how the weather is. One time on a "credit department" call, I just blatantly asked "Does this scam shit really work on people?" Answer: "All the time".

I do like the idea of a company-wide bitbucket though... I might make one now ;)

That actually doesn't work to deter anything.
All you are doing is wasting your time.

If enough people do it, it would driving up staffing costs and drive them out of business. Might never happen, but hey, I get to call someone a scumbag every few days.

Problem is, spammy sales reps don't have the word 'no' in their language. It translates closest to, 'increase spam calls by 2000%', and that's about it.

So instead they'll call back asking when the fake employee is available

"Why didn't you just--" is often a sign the problem isn't as simple as you assume.

I don't answer phone calls for money. But some asshole used my address for a scam, fifteen-odd years ago, and roughly once a year that useless information will be sold to another group of lying vultures who will call incessantly for an entire god-damn month, trying to trick someone into answering to the name "Ezekiel." Whatever easy answer you think there is for that, lemme save you some time: no. It does not work. It has been tried.

When some prick bastards decide they want to hound you as if their livelihood depends on it, politely telling them to go fuck themselves is not effective. I hope you never have to find this out the hard way. But there's not really much either you or I could do to stop it, besides that hope.

This. You have a lot of time on your hands if what OP posted is your approach. It's petty, at best. Say "no thank you, I don't have the need or budget for what you're offering", and let them move on.

And when they call back asking for the fake person thatā€™s the amount of time it takes to realize theyā€™re not something youā€™re interested in instead of taking that call a few times a week and having to determine that again.

I wish I had an award to give you. This isn't just good business advice; it's good life advice.

Looks like you've never been on the receiving end of these types of people. You can say no 100 times in 100 different ways and it doesn't change anything.

Some call EVERY DAY. Dealing with that is a constant pain in the a. It's not about saying no and sticking to it, it's the interruption in your day to deal with something that's a complete waste of time.

If you tell Yelp ā€œno way am I payingā€, theyā€™ll fuck up your online reviews. But you can keep sending them to Alicia for a year or two, no problem.

Tell me you've never worked phones or reception without telling me you've never worked phones or reception.

For spammy ones, you tell them no, they take revenge and forward your details to 50 other solicitors.

Lmao your extreme inexperience is showing

This company probably throws away any job application that has the name Alicia on it.

All they hear is "try again later."

Sending them over to an unmonitored email inbox or voicemail serves the same purpose as telling them no, but also makes it more likely that their next 2-3 followup messages also go there instead of wasting an actual person's time.

This. I am the ā€œAleciaā€ at my company and I just tell people no. Why wonā€™t you use us as your vendor? We get better pricing/quality from someone else. You should use us as you processorā€¦no thx we like our current one and donā€™t want to deal with the massive effort it would take to switch. Just say no. Itā€™s easier.

Alicia sounds great! Is she on LinkedIn?

No but she should be!

This is actually a Lars Von Trier movie - The Boss of it All.

Reminds me of William Tuttle. What a great man. RIP

Great man, great Captain.

We salute you, Captain Tuttle.

I had someone like this at my office, her name was Mimi Dubois. Mimi had an extension on our phones so she can get her messages from the unsolicited sales people. Unfortunately one salesman became obsessed with her and began leaving her some very NSFW messages. Mr. Bossman actually called the guys sales director and played some of messages for him. This was not the first time this guy had left inappropriate messages apparently. He was fired from his sales job. And Mimi Dubois was actually Mr. Bossman's cat, may she RIP.

I tell people they want to talk to Dave, and he will be back in the morning, next day, I answer and say Daveā€™s not here man hahah

There was a BGE guy who'd call the same time every few days and since I had a consistent schedule, I'd always be the one to answer. I ALWAYS told him "the owner just left, she'll be available tomorrow around 12pm."

He'd always call back right at 12pm, and it was always the same guy, and I'd ALWAYS say, "the owner just left, but she'll be available tomorrow around 12pm."

Instead of saying bye, I'd tell him, "talk to you when you call back tomorrow."

One time I slipped up and said, "Yeah, I just saw them," since the owner actually was there. But then I saved it with ol' reliable: "she'll be available tomorrow around 12pm."

If it's before noon: "I'm sorry, the owner hasn't come in yet today."

After noon: "I'm sorry, they've already left for the day."

Was the guy aware you were doing this and didn't care? Lol.

Probably. His cadence never changed, he never questioned it.

Sometimes, sales people in shitty cold-calling jobs just have to have "number of attempts today" stats to show their boss.

My Alicia is named Maria. She's my Portuguese maid.

My brother gave himself an imaginary assistant called like Samantha Johnson or something, (he was his own boss and just starting up). People (s)he dealt with were a lot more polite and well spoken when addressing things to her.

Interesting. We find the opposite here. Customers like to shout at the female csr, but when they reach someone who sounds like they have a penis, the get a whole lot more respect.

I think in my brothers case it was more of a "don't shoot the messenger" as "she" was just the person relaying information about my brothers work he was doing for the clients as a "she" was clearly his junior.

It's only when she starts being paid that it becomes a problem.

She was recently included in a company email about a luncheon. Sure would have been nice if she showed up so we could finally meet her

Alicia deserves a raise, direct deposit to the Cayman Islands

My dad had one of those. Her name was Helen Waite. Salesman calls, my dad says "Go to Helen Waite!".

At one of my jobs, her name was Helen. Helen Wate. As in, if you have a problem, you can go to Helen Wate.

Yes, we do this too.

Mabel, Customer Happiness Manager

Shoulda been Customer Unhappiness Manager

CUM

We had one at our family business, her name was Stephanie.

I just forward them to Lenny. https://www.techspot.com/news/77583-lenny-chatbot-trolls-telemarketers.html

Our guy at the shop is Lance, Lance Boil. He handles it all. He will be back in a few days.

That's cool, but what if one day a very qualified Alicia applies for a job at your company?

Well...shit. I had not thought of that.

Might have been good to come up with a less common name.

Our Alicia does have a last name though. Maybe that will save us when the real Alicia comes.

The new Alicia would be Alicia2, no two ways about it

Then if the actual Alicia's last name doesn't match the fake Alicia's last name, then just rename the fake Alicia to whatever still works for that email.

Now if you roll a Nat 20 (or is it a 1 in this case?), and real Alicia's full name matches fake Alicia, then real Alicia is getting a movie star surname instead.

I find this works "Is this a sales call? Because we don't do business with unsolicited callers and I don't want to waste your time"

And if they push, just say you'll take their details for a call back, then don't do it because you told them you don't do business on the phone.

Fake employees can also be useful when you are a one person operation,to appear as a more substantial business enterprise

So that's why Alicia never wanted my ink and toner supplies

Hell yeah, Alicia! Welcome to the team!

Oohhh you need to get in contact with (Ali-she-a) or (Alyssa) but we just call her Alice

In my last job, we didn't have an actual name or email address, but we did have a junk voicemailbox set up on an extension so we could forward sales and scams to it. Extremely handy to have.

This is amazing. Freaking brilliant.

Technically it's an r/UnethicalLifeProTip cuz the whole intentionally lying thing. But seems like a decent way of avoiding annoyances

Unsolicited sales calls are far worse than lying to avoid them.

Yeah probably. Still technically unethical tho.

Nah, especially when the unsolicited calls are far more unethical

Haha. I like doing voices. Pretty sure I can't pull off an alicia. Maybe a Brian. His parents are from Ireland

Oh, it's even better when it's clearly not the right voice

well you're in luck. my posh British will have you screaming for the hills

I already did that! It works like a charm!!

I think Alicia was Devin Null's old mentor before he came to work with us

itā€™s important to note, someone at our company is responsible for monitoring her emails and voicemails to make sure that nothing actually important is missed

Sounds like Alicia exists in some capacity then

long time ago, I worked for a PC repair/sales shop. We had a fake person to handle all the solicitor phone calls.

Her name was 'Shaniqua EmmeeeMumbaheh'. Yes, more than one person asked us to spell her name.

There is no Carol in HR!

Edit- it's important to note, someone at our company is responsible for monitoring her emails and voicemails to make sure that nothing actually important is missed

No its not. If its important, they will find a way to contact a real employee. When I was IT Manager I got so many spam calls that I had 3 voice mail boxes created.

The first was for any Internal calls. I checked it all the time.

The second was for anyone who called and asked for me (by name) from outside the company. I checked that one only once per month.

The third one was for anyone who called from outside the company but didn't know my name and only asked for my title. That box I never checked.

"I spoke with Alicia just the other day, wanted to follow up"

Ah, okay! In that case I'd better transfer you back through to her.

My Dad pulled this stut with his company. His fake CEO was Mr. Miamisti. He only spoke japanese and he was always out of the office on his way to japan or on his way back from japan.

One time someone called his bluff and claimed to have a japanese translator for him.

Personal favorite - Scott Pam, spam@xxx

Play him as the director of R&D, or whatever they need, but he's been out climbing Kilimanjaro. We haven't heard from him in awhile, add a touching personal story, and you're concerned for his safety.

Voicemail is always full. Either they totally lay off, or the emails they send are hilarious. Bonus points if the VM recording is in your own voice.

Many years ago I worked in retail for a man who had a few personal financial mistakes in his past. I was told by another employee that creditors would routinely call the store asking for him, until the employees began saying, "Well, he was in New York City in September (9/11), and we haven't heard from him yet..." The calls stopped.

Oh man, that's great. Probably to far out to use now.

Maybe we can say XX volunteered for the Ukrainian front & their communication has gone dark.

This is slightly different, but the idea of a fake employee for doing business with a third party is similar.

The problem with an Alicia comes when a restaurant calls me, the company that manages their digital backend for ordering and payroll, and they're pissed because somebody changed their menu pricing and they've been selling steak dinners to doordash for $2. They're blaming us and our system and saying it randomly changes things like your grandma's phone. Normally this would be simple, but unfortunately when I check the logs who see which employee changed the menu and what permissions they have, everything has been edited under the name "Alicia", and none of the other employees use their own login because Alicia has all the permissions, and her code is 0000 so it's easy to remember. So now we don't know or have proof of who changed the menu, or who accidentally charged somebody an extra $2000 for drinks last night, or who gave a refund to a large order and gave away a bunch of free food.

These are all real problems I've encountered at work due to Alicias.

The main problem is the implementation of Alicia, either she has the basic or no permissions or nobody gets access to her.

Now we need someone to draw Fan art of Alicia handling stuff until it falls on Rule34 territory.

Theres a song about her...

https://youtu.be/KxXyeSKN7Fs

I didn't know anyone else knew this song! I scream sing it in the car.

We tell them to mail everything to Ian. Ian debuine

at my old job, we had a Donna.

My wifeā€™s name is Alicia. I just found out she doesnā€™t exist so does that mean Iā€™m single?

From the same energy, when solicitors come by, I now start with "Are you guys serious? You're the 2nd (or 3rd) rep to knock on my door this (day or week)! They always get flustered like they're super wasting their time.

Reminds me of the enigmatic "S. Larson" when I worked at Citibank. Every letter a customer received was always signed by the fictitious S. Larson.

Why not just hang up immediately?

What?? just hang up the fucking phone and be done with it.

That's quite shitty ghosting people who are looking for a job.

That has literally never happened. Not one time.

Usually people looking for employment lead with that, not some sales pitch or asking for a department. They say they want to apply for a job, and they get directed right to the hiring manager.

But yes, you're perfectly correct, that would be shitty to do to someone looking for a job, that's why we don't do that.

I feel like I'm the Alicia at my office...

That's crazy, ours is named Alicia too! It used to be Alan but we switched to save money on salary

Salespeople are deceitful time burglars. It's okay to be rude to them when they're trying to turn your time into their commissions.

This is Canary M. Burns. The entire plant is in his name.

This must be the backstory behind Pepe Silvia

I used to be a CS department of one. I would always reply to general inquiries under a fake name. That way I could escalate to myself under my own company email rather than the broad CS email, whenever the need arose. Worked like a charm.

I did this at a company I worked at a few years ago, but I kept switching up the name. I bet they are still getting calls for Roberto and janelle lol

We had Victor at my previous job. Victors extension was a rather expansive phone tree, and all options would eventually route back to the beginning of the options. The only way to escape the cycles of menus were to hang up yourself, or to select the option ā€œIf this an unsolicited sales call, please press Xā€, which would actually go to a voicemail box that would then get emailed to our entire team. We figured, if you were willing to admit that you were an unsolicited sales call, the least we could do was hear you out.

we do this. Cory is our hero. named after a similar 'person' and role i actually had at a job years and years ago handling all sorts of 'correspondence'

You need to also make her extension 666. Itā€™s the only way to go, and I know this because there was an Alicia at an old employer as well. Complaints were sent straight there.

As the sole IT guy/manager at my former company I was getting so many calls for services and I just did not have the time to deal or reject all of them. It got out of hand. So I created a mailbox with a voicemail ā€œ Hello. We are currently very happy with the services we have. You will not save us any money or make our lives better. If you still want to try, feel free to leave a message and we will probably never call back. Beepā€. I got several ā€œWTF?ā€ Messages but it worked for me. Rude but efficient. I later had the receptionist forward obvious sales calls directly to that extension. Plus I noticed several people in the company started to use the extension too just to get rid of people. I cleared this with the owner of course. He thought it was hilarious.

This does work. Have a friend that works at Mikeā€™s automotive. People call all the time and ask to talk to Mike. Thereā€™s no Mike. Never has been. Weeds out the people who havenā€™t done business with them and makes it easy to call out their lies ā€œspoke to Mike last weekā€¦ā€. Sure you did (ā•ÆĀ°ā–”Ā°ļ¼‰ā•Æļøµ ā”»ā”ā”»

My husband dated her before we connected - she went to a different school.

I knew a guy who worked at a record company. They had a non-existent employee that they transferred phone calls from people who wanted to cancel their subscriptions.

Also, these employees are great for the business scammers - the ones who call to get delivery information for a truckload of toner (that your business didn't actually order).

Oh, you need Ms Back, Helen Back

Good to see Remington Steele is still having an impact

Alicia needs a fucking raise

Ours is frank. After a while they asked why frank wasnā€™t there. The latest story is that he was a drug mule near the border and got sent to guatamolian prison. I also will ask them to please hold and put the phone on mute and walk away. If they are there when I come back Iā€™ll pick up and say ā€œjust one more minuteā€ then rinse and repeat

I'm sitting here in Australia trying to figure out why you would use a fake employee to deal with your lawyers.

Language is funny sometimes

Telemarketers might be a better name, since they are making UN-solicited phone calls.

The tattoo shop I apprenticed in had this! His name was Pauly. The telemarketers were the funnest part. We had a new story for why he couldn't come to the phone every time. My favorite was telling them that if they heard from Pauly, he owed me 10 grand cash, and hang up. Often we'd just talk about what ridiculous way he died that week. His full name was complete nonsense, there's no way anyone at a call center thought he was real, but they were good sports!

Oh yeah. We used to promise to throw all kinds of things on ā€œJimā€™s deskā€. That was the label on the trash can right behind the counter, in case the new employees needed a reminder.

In the hands of the good businessman, Alicia is great. In the hands of the lazy and unwilling, Alicia will be detrimental.

Thereā€™s pros and cons to doing this. Sure itā€™s great to avoid Karen and the usual small problem critiques about nothing. But then comes actual problems that needs solving. Are you willing to spend time to listen or are you going to immediately jump to the conclusion that this is just another Karen and accidentally ignore a real problem by transferring it to Alicia?

Hahah. I love lying to people to avoid confrontation!!!

I like to think that Lloyd Gross is a no nonsense guy...and he likes to call people Kemosabe.

Ours was named Kevin!

Best tip Iā€™ve seen thus far. Thank you!

I need this in my personal life.

"fake it till you make it" has got a new example just now

My previous boss used to have a fake employee who handled complaints, Peter. When he got too much heat from people, he simply replied under a different name saying "Peter is fired"..

My fatherā€™s warehouse manager, Jim, is often on vacation, so he lets them know theyā€™ll have to call back another time. Jim is also employed as an egg producer in my fatherā€™s chicken coop!

Also LifeProTip: Remember that old land line phone number you had as a kid, but now don't because cellphones, I give that to stores for their "member programme". I also have a fake email, but the phone number is my tip.

This is a great idea. I find that if youā€™re a small company or freelancer setting up a fake agent or receptionist helps to give you more credibility.

This is probably the worst lpt I've read in this sub.

Curious what makes you say that?

Because saying no is easier or blocking the number.

This is from the perspective of businesses. Unlike private persons who can easily just change email address or set up really strict filters, businesses usually have to be open to the public, and therefore advertisers who will take advantage of that.

And they can say no.

Says the man with no idea how sales reps work.

So please tell me how they work then if I don't understand.

Apparently, you guys think using a fake number will get rid of them hahaha.

Yeah, you're all dumb.

OK, we will call you back next week to see if you have changed your mind.

And blocking numbers doesn't really work for a business.

You are a crazy blocking solicitors is done often in businesses. Why would I not block the number of some dude who wants to take our electric recycling or some rando who is try to sell some other unneeded service.

You can block them, they'll just use another. Rinse and repeat, they'll never run out of numbers.

This isn't talking about legitimate local businesses. This is about the hundreds of calls that are overly aggressive, deceptive, or full on scams that waste everyone's time and energy and tie up the phone lines.

And what, you think these people will call the nonexistent employee and then be done with it?

By your own logic, they're just going to call the number a few times and then try the real ones again.

This LPT is dumb af and the people upvoting it either don't deal with this stuff or are just socially awkward people who can't say no.

I didn't argue anything about the LPT. I just pointed out that people who think it's just the occasional call from another business or legitimate people that can simply be blocked or told no have no idea who this tip is directed at.

Because they'll just abandon this number and purchase another.

And then few years later some hapless chap who got this recycled number will be trying to contact you for the service and wonder why does the call not go through. And then he'll tell all his friends not to deal with you because you never take calls.

Because they'll just abandon this number and purchase another.

Yeah. Just like they will abandon calling the person that never picks up or replies, and go right back to calling the real employees.

You guys have the ability to sit and think about this situation before commenting, and you're still writing dumb shit like this.

Y'all have no critical thinking skills at all.

As a pesky salesperson, this is the right answer. Just tell me no. I will not ever bother you again.

Hard to believe how many times ā€œtipsā€ that are basically - just lie - get posted here

This is not a good lpt.

... because? You forgot that part of your post.

[deleted]

No, it won't. If you give them a dead extension maybe, but if you maintain an ostensibly functional voicemail the sales person can check off the cold call as "Left a voicemail with contact", and if you provide an email you can even automate occasional responses.

I actually like the idea of writing a script to do just that... hmm.

When the premise of a tip is to lie to and try to deceive people rather than just being honest it usually is bad advice

Found the sales cold caller

And in a time where linkedin exists it is even worseā€¦

Because we know everyone uses that and is surely up to date. It's a very reliable and accurate source of dependable information, which also couldn't ever be used to set up a fake account for Alicia.

Sure why not fuck up the whole organization on a major work website just to realize this LPTā€¦

Iā€™ll make a fake online identity for Alicia idgaf!

It's just more work than hanging up on them lol

not a very common name but it's pretty

Thank you. :D

As someone who works with a pharmaceutical company offering free (COMPLETELY FREE) medical resources to providers dealing with pediatric patients suffering from rare neurological conditions, why canā€™t you just say no?

Not every solicitor is out to get your money. Iā€™m just trying to help doctors and kids out.

A simple ā€œThanks for the call, but we arenā€™t interested,ā€ is more than enough for me to final dispo you and take you off the list.

[deleted]

Yes there are some sales people that see a response, even a response of no, as an open door to reach out more.

I hate it. The most rude I've ever been at work was to those types of sales people. And I feel bad but at a certain point it was harassment.

I've been getting headhunters contacting me for jobs I'm not interested in for years. Despite initially politely saying no, then forcefully saying no, then aggressively saying no and immediately hanging up and asking to never be contacted again they keep calling and sending emails. This fake Alicia is for people like that.

Edit: I went to one eye doctor once, once. That company was later acquired by "my eye doctor". I ended up in both of their systems so I was getting double reminders for my upcoming appointment (that I hadn't scheduled) then I missed the imaginary appointment and started getting double reminders to schedule, notices that I'd missed and reminders for my upcoming appointment (still not scheduled) I, as nicely as possible, called the customer service and told them under no circumstances would I go back to them because they annoyed me too much with all the reminders.

I got called the next day and called back and asked them to double check I'm off every list. It took about a month to clear myself from their system. But I eventually got out

They can say no. They just choose to play games instead of recognizing people who call them are just doing their jobs and actually appreciate and deserve honesty as much as anyone else

You sound really naive.

Not sure why youā€™re labeling me as naive.

tl;dr "I'm nice, so why don't you treat everyone else like they're nice too?"

You treat people the way you want to be treated, period.

Also, doctors offices are 100% missing out on free medical resources and services because they treat every call as if satan himself is trying to sell them a product.

You donā€™t know if Iā€™m calling you to sell you slightly changed product 2.0, or if Iā€™m offering life saving medical treatments for free. So why assume everyone is a dick?

Is it really that hard to say ā€œThanks for the call but we arenā€™t interestedā€ hang up

I get it from both ends lol. I call medical offices because the specific provider has signed up for our program to volunteer with us, but the front desk staff or office manager sometimes get evasive like this and i cant tell if its because they assume the dr isnt interested or if its legit.

Sometimes it does legit take a long time before the provider gets around to answering my request for the program. So, I don't give up easy if I'm told it's still being reviewed.

But if they just said no, I could move on to another volunteer asap instead of wasting everyone's time.

I'm still trying to perfect how to include "if this isn't something Dr X would be interested, please let me know." In my spiel.

This sounds pointlessly involved. Why canā€™t you just say no and hang up?

Some people, especially sales, don't take no for an answer. I own a business and can confirm that you will get inundated by people who find you on Google and want to sell you their services. Some are very creative now about looking like legit inquiries instead of sales people. It would be nice to have an Alicia to send them to.

And you think they'll stop when they reach the nonexistent Alicia?

Use some logic. And you call the other person dumb.

Bunch of socially awkward pea brains up in this thread. Just say no, it's easy.

Take no for an answer? You literally just hang up the phone and the problem is solved.

No, it isnā€™t. They will keep calling, or even come by in person. It is incredibly obnoxious to have precious time wasted in a small company.

You're either too young to have the experience to understand the nuances of business or too dumb to concede on this minor issue. Perhaps both.

[deleted]

Thank you. I didnā€™t just make this up as the idiot above believes. I commented based on my long professional history with this stuff

This is hilarious. Please continue

They have deluded themselves into thinking there time is more valuable than anyone elseā€™s and that dishonesty is more entertaining

Why wouldn't our time be more valuable?

No one employed here gets paid to listen to sales pitches. Solicitors can recite their sales pitch to the voicemail of someone who doesn't exist until they meet their cold call quota.

No one has to listen to them. You politely say no thank you and hung up. You are delusional if you think sending them on a wild goose chase is saving your company time. You said yourself that they keep calling and say they spoke to the imaginary employee recently and are following up. When thereā€™s hope commissioned sales people tend to get more creative . When they get a definitive ā€œno thank youā€ from someone they perceive is a decision maker they move on.

So when the sales reps lie to make money, itā€™s understandable. When someone lies to avoid losing money in the form of wages, thatā€™s not fine.

Make it make sense.

OP is presenting this as a time saving LPT which itā€™s not. It probably ends up wasting time if we are being honest. Is it fun and gratifying ? Probably. Is it a time saving LPT, ? not even close. Itā€™s 2 wrongs not making a right

So getting "creative" to get someone on the phone is not quite as dishonest as Alicia, but still someone who's time is valuable. Right?

So you combat wasted time by wasting others time?

You can defend it all you want but you are simply entertaining yourselves. You arenā€™t saving t your company time by giving out the name of an imaginary decision maker because any cold caller worth employing isnā€™t going to stop until he has spoken directly to that person and is told they arenā€™t interested. Because your phantom office manager has never told anyone no they will be forever on peopleā€™s list of prospects who they try to contact whenever things are slow.

You're right. It's purely for entertainment purposes and it costs us nothing. Free entertainment to waste other people's time.

We get a good laugh about it everytime too. Especially when those "I was just on the phone with her and we got disconnected" come about.

Definitely sounds like someone whose time should have value to me.

Exactly, so this isnā€™t really a Life Pro Tip at all. This is just some kind of weird revenge through deception masquerading as a life tip, wasting everyoneā€™s time

Found the cold calling salesman who's salty he never got to speak to Alicia.

Yes, enjoying life and having a laugh is definitely not worthwhile.

Yes, it is a lie and a waste of time. In response to aggressive marketing that wonā€™t take no for an answer. There are a great many things worth getting riled up about; this is not one of them.

The part you are forgetting is itā€™s posted in Life Pro Tips as a supposed time saving life hack. Itā€™s not that , itā€™s just a weird flex

You can defend it all you want, but cold calling shouldn't exist. It's the most intrusive and unwelcome way to try to sell a product. Salespeople do not have an automatic right to your time, or to speak to a decision maker.

Iā€™m not defending cold calling. Iā€™m saying that calling this a time saving life pro trip is intellectually dishonest. Itā€™s someone flexing a stupid revenge tactic. Nothing more than that

don't let 'em get to to you lol, i was such a salesman back in my younger day... trained to never accept a no as an answer. fucking hated sales

Some solicitors wonā€™t stop regardless of how much and how assertively and even how forcefully you say no and hang up. Even if you block them they will send another rep from another number in a few weeks, sometimes itā€™s because itā€™s a scam, others itā€™s because the company/business thinks if they just keep trying, theyā€™ll call you at the right time (a.k.a. Whenever you finally need their services, theyā€™ll be there) and then youā€™ll say yes. For those solicitors, itā€™s the ever-versatile Alice.

Ours is "Heather" also really helps when people get creepy on the live chat.

Think twice about deploying this fun joke if your company has a sales staff. Because the karma thing happens and your salespeople chase the tail all day, instead of being productive in their jobs.

Run this ruse past your company CEO and the sales manager and see if she/he thinks this is the way to handle inquiries from potential business partners.

I think this is what a lot of people donā€™t realize. Like yes thereā€™s a lot of pushy, annoying, salespeople out there but mostly just people doing their job. Sales is hard, and itā€™s people like OP who make it harder and push out the people who are ethical and honest.

You donā€™t know what youā€™re missing out on until you hear about it, and who better to tell you than a trained professional with that specific product? Frequently Iā€™ll hear things like ā€œwait, you guys do that??ā€ And ā€œyouā€™ll take care of all this for us?ā€ because they had no idea thereā€™s a service out there that can help their business succeed. Instead they send them to a fake email, wasting the salespersonā€™s time, their own time, and laughing the whole time as they treat regular people like shit.

OP is a jerk, and thinks itā€™s funny.

This is the best point here. Literally every business has to sell a product. If a business didn't sell something to make money they simply would cease to exist and everyone there wouldn't have a job.

That sounds like saying no with extra steps. I've been in your situation and I just said no. Saves a lot of time and you don't have to check the mailbox of an imaginary person.

I agree. It's unnecessarily passive aggressive.

or you could just be professional and say "sorry, not interested"

Gen Z problems require Gen Z solutions

Or you could just say ā€œNo, thank you.ā€

This seems a Bad Tip.

Speaking as an individual and not a business, every time I have had communication with a solicitor it has been something that I have needed to act on quickly and not put off.

Maybe this is a North America vs British meaning of the word issue? I read this as a salesperson of some sort, rather than a lawyer.

Solicitor = sales person peddaling wares on cold calls

See, I'm used to solicitor = legal professional

If you watch the show The Boys, naming the assistant Alicia hits extra hard.

Why not just say "we're not interested"? (Or, just ignore their contact attempts?)

Oh my sweet, summer child ā€¦

Or you know...just say no thank you instead of making up an elaborate lie..šŸ¤„

And what if they keep calling, even after saying no?

You can block phone numbers, emails

Actual LPT: tell them you're not interested and to take you off their list so they can stop wasting your time- any employee of a legit company will be happy to do so and grateful that you are letting them move on to leads that ARE interested.

That's the other issue. Csr can't always identify a scam caller asking for accounts receivable or a legitimate call. Sending them to Alicia takes it our of their hands and into the hands of the person who's job it is to deal with it in the first place.

Wow, admitting your customer service team isn't well trained enough to speak to other humans so you have them mix the real and fake business communications together on an imaginary desk. Sounds like a great idea to run a business.

Or just grow the balls to hang up on them instead of encouraging them to keep calling

The amount of work people will go through to avoid saying no is hilarious.

Just hang up on them, they don't care and even if they do, fuck them.

Your IT department is a joke if they agree to this.

Our IT department is the owner of the company.

One guy, who isn't particularly IT savy.

So, yes.

Congratulations, your LPT is so useless it made me mute the entire sub.

Hope no one else has better advice than you.

Delighted to be of service.

seems like it'd be easier to say "No thank you, not interested."

Business solicitors will not take a no from anyone they just keep coming. They figure they just haven't spoke to the right person or that there's someone higher that they will be able to convince. It will be a barrage of phone calls, emails and non stop drop by's no matter how busy you are and how many customers you have just to tell them for the 100th time that you are not interested.

I feel sorry for anyone named Alicia trying to get a job there.

How do I get the job of managing Alicia, because that sounds perfect to me.

This is annoying. I work as an account manager and if someone said this to me and yā€™all miss your paychecks or if thereā€™s a issue iā€™m fully blaming yā€™all lol

Iā€™m in Europe. I started reading this thinking you were talking about lawyers. Got me very confused!

As a sales rep that has to cold call, it's no surprise to me that places make up fake people.

LPT for reps dealing with this: just keep showing up.

Also if solicitors go to your home to solicitate a solicitation tell them your a plumber, baby sitter, burglar or someone working on the home

Ahh yes, the plumber who answers the door...

Btw just tell them you rent and your landlord already has a _ they use, then close the door.

Why tf would solicitors cold call? Bizarre

They are sales reps, not lawyers.

A lot of them will actually stop calling if they are legit and you let them know you are not interested and ask to be removed from their list. People who do cold calls for B2B don't usually want to waste their time with dead leads.

Sounds like you work for a pretty shit company that holds zero accountability pal.

It's called a Honeypot User. They're great for cybersecurity too!

Or, just tell them no and stop lying to the publics faces. Your company sounds like an instant blacklist for me.

Gosh if only these people would blacklist us so we can get back to the thing we are paid to do, which interesting enough, has nothing to do with most of what these people are calling to sell.

My favorite is when people try to sell me the service I offer.

No thanks, I think we've got that covered, thanks.

Or just get a spam blocking app and be done with it?

This is like edging and denial play for spammers...

You're giving them all hope. Stop it.

I saw Alicia was doing recent research on... care to tell me what peaked her interest?

I worked at a small software company that did a bunch of work for various three letter agencies.

ā€œJane Smithā€ was the account rep for all of their contracts. Jane magically handled everything from voice mail to email to whatever was needed to support these contracts.

I do this! Mine is called Melissa! I only run a small business and Melissa gets blamed for a lot of screw ups.

ā€oh you didnā€™t get the reminder for your service? Melissa thought she had sent it, Iā€™ll let her know you were missed off her list!ā€

ā€œAh, sorry about that, Melissa didnā€™t forward that email on to me, Iā€™ll get on it right awayā€¦ā€

Poor Melissa is going to need a raise soon šŸ¤£

This was how we handled calls at a previous job I had. The owner/boss goes by his middle name. If someone called asking for his first name, we knew they had no business talking to him. If they called and asked for his middle name, then we'd take a message or transfer the call to his office.

When you say solicitors, do you mean lawyers or salespeople?

We used to have a Lenny - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLduL71_GKzHHk4hLga0nOGWrXlhl-i_3g - built into our telephone system. "Oh, you need to speak to Lenny, I'll transfer you now!" I miss that bot...

My work did this too. Started it 20 years ago and we now get pre-approved credit cards in his name, loan offers, and people calling saying that they spoke to him the day before and demanding we put them through to him. Itā€™s crazy.

Still keeping them clueless

Alicia is a great wife and mother. We still never speak sometimes.

I worked for a company that has similar. O.C. Baxter (Orange Cat). When solicitors would call, I'd say "Oh, Mr Baxter handles these kinds of things, but he can't talk, would you like his voice mail?"

I was honest, since cats can't talk.

When I got married, my uncle told us to make an email address for everyoneā€™s ā€œhelpfulā€ suggestions, then never check it.

Your friend is a wedding photographer??? Youā€™re right, the food at your reception was incredible! You think our taste in colors are awful and want to provide input! Amazing! Email me at OurWeddingEmail@gmail.com. Thatā€™s where Iā€™m keeping everyoneā€™s stuff so I can find it when we need it.

Which was never.

When house hunting I gave my mom a Google form to submit leads to for me to check.

A "Solicitor" in many parts of the world is what a lawyer is called......

I'm so confused. Solicitor means lawyer in the UK. What does it mean wherever this is?

Salesman. People that want you to buy their shit, or switch to their services they offer. Sales reps.

What happens if Alicia ever applies for a position at your work?

My old boss' name is Perry, but we give the solicitors the name Terry. Whenever someone asks for Terry, we know it is a solicitor. I usually just put them on hold saying I will see if he is in, eventually they hang up, but not until I have wasted precious minutes of their time.

Isnā€™t the person that monitors Aliciaā€™s email performing as Alicia?

I blame my non-existent husband (who's in the shower etc) for the reason I cannot talk to salespeople or make a crucial decision about solar or auto warranties - or go on a date with some crusty old guy.

I am about ready to hire an Alice because I have had about 10 solicitation calls today. every time I get in a good work groove someone call asking about how my phone service is. You can hear me cant you?

We have an imaginary legal department with its own legal@ email account. They get occasionally added into email chains.

My old boss had a Mike White (same last name, made up first name) that served the same purpose. Saved hours of time with solicitors.

And when the police come for all your illegal activities, blame alice.

I've seen a lot of silly comments, but this one wins. Tell me, what exactly is illegal about essentially naming our spam inbox Alicia?

Or you know, tell them youā€™re not interested.

Otherwise they will hassle you because sheā€™s not getting back to them and they NEED to speak with her

So the employee we were doing a transaction with had major heart surgery, and we ended up dealing with one of these fake people emailing us on his account. I did some digging on social media and learned he was hospitalized, and yet the emails came even while this guy was recovering from surgery. He never called, and Iā€™m sure it wasnā€™t him because the tone of the emails was off and he lacked a lot of context from when we spoke in person.

My 4 founders and managers act like low paid employees when a customer approach them . - no way? Iā€™ll let my manager know about this , thank you. Kicks it in the trash after said walks away.

ā€œI spoke with Aliciaā€ bahahaha I would die!!

The manager of a hotel, I had worked for, made up an employee. I forgot the name. When a customer was rude or worse, he would tell them that his name was this (mostly phone)and he would be slightly rude to the customer.

The costumers would complain to our boss about it. He would always say that this person does not work here.

Everyone needs an Alicia in their lifes

In my office we use Italian swear words and itā€™s even more hilarious when they call back asking for that person. Even more hilarious is when one of our coworkers is slow on the uptake and starts asking so and so is.

Lol definitely thought you meant lawyer/solicitors on first glance here. Made the scenario even funnier.

Not bad for minimum wage!šŸ˜‚

I went to high school with Aliciaā€™s daughter, Alice. She told me she had never actually seen her mother, but just heard about her. Alice was raised by her maternal aunt Becky.

it's important to note, someone at our company is responsible for monitoring her emails and voicemails

So, what's your job?

"I'm an assistant to a non-existent worker at our company; I tend to the needs of the shadows"

I need to hire one for my personal life.

...she handles all the subpoenas....

Years and years ago, back when copy toner sales calls (and scams) were rampant, the company I worked for at that time had a similar ā€œemployeeā€, though we used a less common name - Gertrude. So yea, it was a thing back in the 90ā€™s and 00ā€™s.

Alicia deserves a raise.

Lol nice tip!! I'll use some days

Iā€™m the secretary for a medical office and I just tell them Iā€™m the one in charge of that stuff. You can tell once they start their spiel if theyā€™re a solicitor and then tell them youā€™re not interested. Theyā€™re solicitors 99% of the time, if theyā€™re legit theyā€™ll know to call our corporate office.

Alicia from Ohio fr

Omg hahaha, I work office admin job at a large furniture store so Iā€™m taking stupid calls a lot not just customers. This would be perfect. Iā€™m bringing it up to my GM

Or you know, just say 'not interested' and hang up, takes even less time than trying to hand out a non-existent person's e-mail and phone number.

At first I thought we were talking about walk in solicitors and was very confused

Doesn't this delay the problem though, if they are calling back?

For those Uline shoppers (or those that receive Uline catalogs), "Irene Doolittle" is the head of customer care. You'll see her name attributed to customer service emails and customer letters. She doesn't exist.

I totally did this. I was the owner but 75% of my customers thought I was the AM manager. 100% recommend doing this.

We've been doing this for over 15 years. Our fake do-everything employee is named Tom Anderson (The Matrix). We've even had people show up claiming they have an appointment with him.

At a place I worked there was a CIO named "Timmy" who was fired long before I worked there. People would always ask for Timmy and sometimes I pretended to be timmy. I also liked to call people's desks and pretend to be a salesman and ask for Timmy and hurl insults at my co-workers for daring to keep me from Timmy when I'm his best friend in the whole world.

I did this years ago for a company I used to work for! It was all great until some solicitors dropped by saying they'd set up a meeting with "Sally" and a new employee blurted out "there's no Sally here!" Lol

We have a dude named Steve and someone called and said they met him at a conference and wanted to grab lunch. šŸ˜‚

We have Cheryl for this lmao!!

I have worked as a receptionist for many years and this is GENIUS! Thank you!

it's important to note, someone at our company is responsible for monitoring her emails and voicemails to make sure that nothing actually important is missed

And that is Erika, who is also non-existent.

I had a client with a trick like this, he owned the property under a pseudonym but managed it under his real name. he shirked responsibility with "that's one for the boss, email/ write to him". it as great. I needed to stall a decision one day so I said it'd need the owners permission, this resulted in the client waiting two days to "have the boss get back to me".

Our fake manager is Ben. Sometimes i even pretend to be him on the phone when a solicitor gets through!

If someone is monitoring the email they are Alicia. That sounds like work.

My male boss has a unisex name that is more commonly a female name. I just love when people say they spoke with "her" recently.

I created an extension in our call center for 0666 ā€œsolicitor hellā€., it rings the phone next to me (which is silenced) 99 times and then drops the call

Don't do this if you're a government worker or at a regulated company. My last job this would have been very illegal.

I worked at a place called Murphy's Pub when I was in college. People would claim that Murphy was a friend of theirs.

Murphy was the owner's dog.

I used to work as a corporate receptionist at a large insurance company in London. It was interesting dealing with solicitors. They had some very creative ways of getting ahold of the right person. I honestly admire their tenacity to lie through their teeth so casually on a daily basis lol

Wow, I would've never thought of that! Thanks alot for the tip! Mine will be called Jacques šŸ™‹ā€ā™‚ļø

I use to do that now I just stare at them and say ā€œNo I donā€™t want to waste your time ā€œ then if they ramble say Iā€™m serious I donā€™t need uniforms , we donā€™t handle any LTL on our end , we are fully booked with staff , we donā€™t offer insurance , we donā€™t need _____

Itā€™s always the same industries walking in ā€¦.

100% success rate they leave their card and get out.

My insurance company does this, every email I get is from Orla O'Neill, she must be so busy types ng emails 24/7.

Go one step further and collect a paycheck for "Alicia".

It took me several minutes before I found the comment that explained why the hell so many lawyers call this company.

Works great until you hire an actual Alicia...

I GOT BOXES FULL OF PEPE

My favorite unsolicited call ever was to a small, family owned, business that I worked at. The caller asked for the old owner by first and last name. By his full proper first and last name. Which he never, in the eighteen years I worked for him, went by.

So I apologized and told them that he's no longer associated with the business and asked what they were calling about. They kept asking for the new owner's first and last name. I kept asking who they were. Since I want going to give that info to a stranger.

"Well would you do business with someone who won't tell you the owners name?"

My response: "You won't even tell me what this call is about, I can tell you I would never do business with someone who won't tell me why they're calling!"

We had one of those. His name was DT which stood for Dial Tone.

Not just individuals but departments are made up also. Fun tip for Canadians: If you're a Rogers customer upset with their service, you will get transfered to the 'Office of the President'. There is no President at Rogers. The Office of the President is a bs department to make customers feel like they're getting somewhere.

Omg I love this idea and is exactly what we need at my work

Alicia still owes me money!

We do this at our pet salon, except incoming messages to go the shop cat, Dorothy.

It's hilarious when someone calls and says "I was speaking with Dorothy about my appointment last week" and we're like... "Did she tell you to bring her salmon snacks? Because that's pretty much all she'll ever ask for. She's a cat."

This is usually when they don't have an appointment but are trying to get us to cave and get them on the schedule.

Alicia lived across the street from me when I was six. She and I were in Kindergarten together. I was madly in love with Alicia. Please let her know I said hello.

Just give then the number to the rejection hotline

We only ever got as sophisticated as pretending to put them on hold as we transferred them to the boss, then placed the phone next to the radio until they got bored and hung up.

We had Veronica Valoor, named by our receptionist. Veronica had her own phone number and voicemail. It was funny when salespeople would physically come to our office asking for Veronica. Uh, sorry she's traveling this week.

It took me a minute to realise you werenā€™t talking about lawyers lol

She's probably underpaid

At our company weā€™re pulling a reverse version in which we start laughing vigorously when unwanted solicitors (with obviously false claims about previous conversations) ask for our CEO. We then proceed explaining to them that he is indeed an AI we developed to get rid unwanted solicitors, and that any evidence of this CEO on the internet/socials/whatever is the product of said AI. They never bother us again afterwards.

Why wouldnt you just tell them you are not interested, please dont call again and hang up? You seem to be spending a lot of time and effort on this fake employee scheme...

That's my name. Glad to help.

Scatter brain jane

My uncle's run a very old family business and there is a fake brother for all the solicitor's he has his own voicemail, email and receives Christmas cards every year.

Ours is Carleton Obama...he is our E-commerce specialist

Sounds like a lot of wasted energy. Every company I've ever worked for just had the receptionists tell them we're not interested and that's that.

Ahh yes we've had a bunch of employees who were fantastic like that. We've had Jeff,Elias and Trevor.

On a very similar note, when you go to buy a car - you're married even if you're not. Pull out the magic words - "oh, I have to speak to my spouse about this" when they try to pressure you to close the deal. The spouse doesn't have to exist.

We did something similar, except it was Rick. We get a cold caller trying to sell something, "hang on, let me transfer you over to Rick, he handles this sort of thing" transfer them to an announcment extension we set up that plays a Rick roll. Was hilarious until the CEO found out.

Captain Tuttle, MAS*H, Jan 14, 1973

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0638468/

Just block emails from people that don't listen when you tell them to stop emailing and tell solicitors you're not interested. It's not that hard.

There's a woman who 'lives' in my home named Anne Onymous and she has all my correspondences with the BBC about TV licencing.

My dadā€™s company has something very similar. He is one of the company executives (worked his way up over 20 years) and gets tons of solicitors who call him by a nickname/shortened version of his name (not his real name, but like Mike instead of Michael). Everyone who knows my dad knows that he hates being called ā€œMikeā€, and the only person who does it is his best friend from college.

So whenever a caller pretends that theyā€™re buddies with my dad and ask for ā€œMikeā€, they get sent to a dedicated voicemail (that is checked twice a month), since ā€œMikeā€ is very busy and in lots of meetings.

Haha I have a fake owner & employee with my business too.

What does solicitor mean?

At our company we have Brooke and Jason. They are very helpful.

When I was running my own company I used to have a partner ā€˜Ericā€™ who was the ā€œmoney guyā€. And, he was a dick! Anytime Iā€™d get a solicitor or have an issue with a client Iā€™d always say, ā€œLet me get with Eric and see what he wants to doā€.

Client trying to get a discount. Eric would say No. solicitor calls and wants somethingā€¦. Eric tells them to go away. He rarely ever answers calls but will always answer email Iā€™d tell people.

Then when I felt like it Iā€™d log into Ericā€™s account and start replying.

ā€œNo 15% discount. Best we can do is 2.7%.ā€

ā€œNo weā€™re not interested in your softwareā€

Eric saved me so much money and time just being there. Thank you Eric for all your help and support; my imaginary friend.

Sounds like one of the fall guys at a Japanese company. If someone comes to complain, he, a real guy, would be called to admit fault and apologise profusely, just to get rid of the complainer. A good example would be the supposed local director on the Tokyo shooting of Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift. When they shot the Shibuya intersection scene w/o official permission, the police came calling. That ā€˜directorā€™ spent the night in jail. (I really donā€™t have a source for all of these ļ¼¼(^-^)ļ¼ )

What if ā€¦. And Iā€™m just spitballing hereā€¦. What if you told these folks that you arenā€™t interested . And they could then remove you from their call list. Iā€™m sure they would be delighted to move on to someone who is interested.

Working for Alicia is all fun and games until someone demands to meet Alcia in person, which forces you to improvise with the random, very beautiful, woman with a mysterious past who accidentally wanders into Alicia's hotel room, causing you to have to work with her because she doesn't actually know how to run "her business" and ends up pulling you into all sorts of work-related shenanigans that you never dreamed of having to deal with because "beautifuly mysterious Ms. Alicia" somehow seems to be a magnet for trouble, until you slowly fall in love with each other and live happily ever after

This is hilarious!!! Iā€™m cracking up!

I read "solicitors" as lawyers so was confused for a bit there!

We have Lenny, check /r/itslenny

How much should we pay'em?

At a company two decades ago we had ā€œPat Jonesā€. From SNL skits. Added that extra layer of them not knowing their pronoun.

So THAT'S what happened! I called up to find out what happened to my wife's watch and she was like, "its Friday and we're all getting druuuunk" and hung up.

If someone is checking that stuff, then Alicia not a fake employee.

Sounds like my friend Captain Tuttle. Truly an amazing hero.

At my parents' medical business this person is named Erica.

Coincidentally, Erica started as the Everything Manager at the same time I started answering phones for them and learned exactly how many cold calls medical businesses receive all day longā€”from drug vendors to equipment vendors, office supplies, software, marketing, payment processors...

Even now, all these years later Erica remains an indispensable employee šŸ˜‚

I don't understand, who are the 'solicitors' in this example? Like meme-y car warranty people, unpleasant (non-functional) clientele, random poachers, or?

This is a very solid LPT.

Iā€™ve always used ā€œoh my brother does thatā€ or ā€œoh my family is in that businessā€. Whenever I want them to get off the phone.

They know they canā€™t compete.

We had an ā€œAliciaā€ at my last job. I loved screwing with the folks calling for her. I once just started crying uncontrollably when a particularly pesky salesman called. No words, just fake crying. He didnā€™t call back for months after that.

Your edit makes everything you said before meaningless. You made up an Alicia, and then created an Alicia.

Do you work for a dealership?

We have someone like that, except that unfortunately they do exist.

Oh boy, wait until an executive wants to talk to Alicia and they cant find her.

​

Heads gonna roll

So it is a real employeeā€¦.

Err, I think faking ownership is usually illegal.

Reminds me of Morgan, our accounts manager. She can be quite unreasonable, wish I could help you.

Itā€™s like when a customer is mad and asks what my name is and I just pretend Iā€™m the other bartender Jeremy.

Fifty Shades of Alicia.

Can you sub out Alicia to my company? I'm tired of doing her job.

Now I don't feel bad about in-person cold calling. I always try to set a meeting first but will drop in if that doesn't happen

Thats a brilliant idea. maybe I need to become my own ā€œsecretary.ā€

I made up a Bonnie. Then she went on maternity leave. Then she never came back to work. No one took her spot, sorry Mr. Telemarketer!

We have a colleague called Rick. If we transfer to him, you get a waiting tune on loop. the tune

I find it easier to just hang up.

Here in the UK the word "solicitor" means a lawyer, so this LPT read very oddly to me :-P

Ours is names Geoffā€¦.ā€ge(t) offā€ the phone

We have a Franklin, at my work.

Me in high school: "Yes I did kiss a girl before! Her name is Alicia and she is not from around here!"

The Big Boss at my place of work has 2 phone numbers... one for real, the other for solicitors.

That is so funny! I have had a ā€œKathyā€ as my alter ego for 30 years! She takes care of bitchy clients, marketing calls, anything unpleasant. She is the best!

What happens when you hire someone named Alicia?

I had a job where our fake manager for employment/wage confirmation was ā€œMartha.ā€ It didnā€™t matter who answered the phone, we were ALL Martha. If the caller asked, ā€œHow long has Jane worked there?ā€ or ā€œHow much does Joe make per month?ā€ we would put you on hold and look on a sheet to see what lie you claimed and state whatever you wanted. Pretty sweet.

Oswald Cobblepot works for us. He gets mail and telephone calls. Only one person has ever called me on it.

Are you talking about Steven? Steven Pam? Heā€™s our director of hardware and software procurement. If you need something from him, email him at SPam@companyName.com!

One place I worked for had Rick Astly on a dead line and we'd just transfer them there and leave them.

Well that explains why Alicia never returned my phone calls and emails for 2 years.

My ex is named alicia she hacked my insta and tried to kill herself by jumping off top floor of her room while she took a pic of hand full of pills. Because i tried to break it up

Years ago, when our boss retired and they werenā€™t hiring a replacement, just dividing his work up amongst the three shifts, I too came up with this idea. The new director would be Mooktar Fartnuckle. His office number is to a supply closet that for some reason has a phone in it, and since they wouldnā€™t create an email for him, we made a gmail account. I even had a nameplate printed up for his old office, which is now used to store crap. It was always fun to explain that Sean retired but Mr. Fartknuckle is handling his workload now.

I wonder how the person who has to be Alicia feels about all of this.

Love this tip. I finally put up a no soliciting sign at my place and itā€™s been really helping cut down on the door to door version.

Why though?

Just ignore solicitors. I delete spam emails and voicemails daily. Few try a second time after their first attempt is ignored completely. If absolutely necessary give them a hard no. Inventing a fake person to fake escalate enquiries to just seems like more work.

Ah like that great korean war hero, Cpt Tuttle.

Most companies have a purchasing department to deal with sales people and it's their job to figure out if it's worth meeting with them. Just sending all of them to a fake person might actually be costing you money.

A solicitor in the UK is a lawyer for civil matters...so ...a little different than sales people

Like hanging up, but with extra steps.

Took me a while to realise solicitor didn't mean lawyers.

Ours is "Christopher Wallace"

This is great. Those solicitor emails have been upping the aggressive side of passive aggressive for our company. I used to delete or archive (if I thought the service might eventually be applicable), but now I mark them as spam with a smile. I don't like being guilt tripped.

If it's a phone call, I just say, "I'm not interested in your services, please take me off your calling list."

LOL. We were doing this with the phone extension and email address of our old IT manager for a couple years after he was let go. I told reception if someone is calling in and asking for any IT staff, they should go to J's extension or email. We have DID's and cell phones, we give our numbers to the people we want to talk to. If they are calling the main lines, it's a cold caller.

I own a commercial printing company and every day we get a few sales visits which are mostly: Health insurance Life insurance Janitorial Freight shipping Office supplies

We have an office cat named Dexter. Dexter is our Director of Operations and his card is up front.

Dexter gets phone calls daily from salespeople taking his card and uploading to their cms

I was gigging as an IT consultant for a large manufacturing company. About 2 weeks in, I started getting emails from a sales rep for a company that sold borescopes. Wanted to send me a sample.

I always ignored the mails. After about 6 months the guy started getting pushy, in email. I still ignored. Went on for the 18 months I was there, except by the end of the run somehow the fucker got my personal cell number.

So one afternoon after the gig was over, I was out on a roadtrip with my wife and the guy calls. I finally answered. Listened to his pitch, then asked him to take his borescope and look up his own ass. Then I hung up.

Never heard from him again.

Grant from Sweetwater. šŸ˜…

Used to work in a pizzeria & would tell solicitors they need to speak with Pete Zaā€¦ he even received mail sometimes

This was Jenni Poulos channeling ā€œDebā€ on Flipping Out! I loved those scenes.

Growing up, my friend had a cat named Benjamin. My friendā€™s dad would sign up for magazines and free trials in Benjaminā€™s name. Mail would arrive at the house for Benjamin C. [LastName] (his middle initial, C., stood for Cat). Benjamin got twelve free issues of Popular Science one year, and Rolling Stone the next.

It was less funny after Benjamin went to sleep. Benjamin kept getting junk mail for years.

Stanā€¦ Stan LaMond?

I just showed this to my wife and her response was "I wish I was Alicia". LoL!!!

We had Max Katz (the office cat, named Max).

My old boss did this hahaha, for multiple office roles šŸ˜‚

I used to transfer them back and forth between my phone and QC, they were in on it too. We'd use different accents and see how many times we could transfer the sales call until they gave up.

I got to be the mystery employee at one point, I got to do fun stuff though like respond to public email inquiries. It was fun! I got to make people's day, I even got a thank you note addressed to my pseudonym once! It was a very small organization, and I was given a lot of leeway and autonomy. Highly recommend creating a fake employee!

We truthfully say that everything and I mean EVERYTHING sales related that we donā€™t want anything to do with is handled by our corporate office in another province. Itā€™s not totally a lie, I mean, they do handle a lot. But you want to offer me a new merchant account? Great, corporate office. Whatā€™s their number? I canā€™t give that out. Oh, thatā€™s okay, Iā€™ll find it online. Thatā€™s awesome, dude, itā€™s a totally different company name but thanks!

Omg an office I worked at had Monty Burns. And you'd think that would be too obvious but those fucks are so desperate they will call and be like "I was golfing with Monty last weekend and he said give him a call". Pathetic. Some would physically come to the office. Our purchasing manager liked to take the calls and make up totally ridiculous reasons as to why Monty was not available. Skydiving accident. Hiking in the Amazon. Street luge competition in Stockholm. I could hear him and would chuckle from across the office.

He had a phone extension, a voicemail and they even made him business cards.

You need Lenny. A number you redirect to, with an old guy that talks about nothing for as long as they want. It's smart enough to wait until they finish taking.

Company I used to work for had an ā€œaccountantā€ named Michelle. I was asked to forward all solicitors to her phone and email. Then eventually I was asked to forward any accounting calls to her as well. The company is now bankrupt after a number of lawsuits.

I appreciate this

In the 90s I worked at Blizzard Entertainment, we had a ā€˜Jack Sterlingā€™ who was the head of HR. Jack was not real, he was responsible for receiving applications from those looking for a gig in the game biz. Jack got a ton of solicitations, a ton of people would call saying they know him...

In england solicitors are lawyers so the headline really confused me

Is her last name Tuttle? They were much loved by the 4077th.

There is no Carol in HR!

This reads very different to a person in the U.K. solicitors = lawyers.

Totally did this at one of my jobs. We had a ā€œbottomlessā€ voicemail box (i.e. one that would never get full) that weā€™d send solicitors to.

One day, I decided ā€œsheā€ needed a name, somehow I landed on Jessica. ā€œOh yeah, Jessica handles that, let me transfer youā€¦ā€ Eventually got to the point where solicitors literally showed up in person with free shit for her. I got a bunch of free office supplies from a guy from Staples under her name. Best was when a guy from Honeybaked Ham stopped by with a box sandwich lunch for ā€œJessicaā€ and Iā€™d happened to forget my lunch that day šŸ˜­

This has me laughing!

I used to direct calls to Helen Weight.

"Accounting? You need to go to Helen Weight for that."

I actually have a better one we have used effectively for years, simply say, "This is a corporation." Most solicitors hang up immediately because they know corps have a board, not a manager. If they ask who is in charge or what's the number to corporate, just say you're a termite in this company, you don't know corporates number.

Anyways, most solicitors hang up the second you say they've called a corporation.

I thought you were British and was thinking this should be in ULPT.

Looking for the real LPT

Why not just tell them to fuck off?

Harry. Harry receives all the calls.

I do this with phone calls! His name is Ian . Sometimes I say I'll go see if I can locate him then go make a coffee before coming back.

Funnily enough, my mom and her friends used to have a fake person for dealing with shite too, her name was Lola DavisšŸ¤£

In Australia (where Iā€™m from) a solicitor is another name for a lawyer - so this post really threw me to begin with

That is absu-f-ing genius!

I worked at a pet shop and our ā€œmanagerā€ was namedā€Stu Pedassoā€

When I lived in Alabama there was a used tire place near my house called "webe tires". We be tires. When anyone came by asking to speak to Mr wiebe they were told he was on vacation in the bahamas.

A few years ago I worked for an architecture firm called Buro Happold. Before my first interview I did my research, and read up on Mr. Happold, but couldn't find anything about a Mr. or Ms. Buro. It took me working there for five months to ask a c-suite employee who Buro was... turns out it was German for bureau (department of). Happold Bureau. I felt like an ass after that.

I worked for a company that received a ridiculous number of sales calls. Something like 95% of incoming calls were unsolicited sales calls.

We just got into a habit of saying "you need to speak to David about that and he'll be in tomorrow". There was no David. So whenever they called back asking for David everyone would say we don't know any David at this company and then say that they actually needed to speak to Peter who would be in tomorrow. Peter also didn't exist.

The process repeated until the sales person gave up or lost the rag with us what happened on a few occasions.

Do you mean sales people? Because that's very different from solicitors...solicitors are lawyers.

I used to work in IT and we would get telemarketing calls about every hour. No amount of blocking or spam filters kept them away. Eventually my coworker and I decided to do this exact thing. If he answered the phone, I was the manager, purchasing supervisor, president, CEO, etc. and vice versa. If it was a busy day, we'd send them to voice mail. However, depending on how slow the day was, we would make sure to waste as much of their time as humanly possible. We found out the best way to deter telemarketers was to make sure they never wanted to call us

I read this as the English definition of Solicotor (a type of lawyer) and wondered why you'd want to mess them around and how they didnt notice.

Costco uses Lisa Simpson

Miss Rabbit does ALL the jobs in this town!

As a Brit this really confused me for a second, as solicitors are lawyers.

We had Fred, Fred Nocandeux

We often have this with my grandfathers company, his name is on the building but he passed away a good 28 years. We get people who call the company being adament that they spoke to him just the other day. At one point I told one that we deal in telecommunication, not ouija boards.

I feel bad for the person you hire in the future named Alicia.

If someone monitors her addresses doesn't that defeat the entire point?

It's the difference between 30 people knocking on your door demanding your attention right now, vs them dropping their card in your mailbox and addressing it whenever you feel like or not at all.

Can't you do that by just telling whoever monitors her addresses to ignore those ppl?

Not when they call to a csr line and they are so numerous. It's easier to just funnel them to one place to deal with them when someone feels like it.

This system clearly won't work for everyone, but there are plenty of people here who have expressed using a similar system that has worked for them for years, just like it has for us.

"I spoke with Alicia the other day! I'm that solicitor whose selling you things and I liked talking with Alicia!"

"That's not possible"

"Why not, you stupid bastard"

"Because Alicia doesn't exist and I don't find this funny anymore"

Theresa Green handles all this at our sawmill ...

Ours is called trudy!

Edit- it's important to note, someone at our company is responsible for monitoring her emails and voicemails to make sure that nothing actually important is missed

Sooo, doesn't that kind of negate the whole strategy then?

like Citibankā€™s S. Larson

My brother-in-law "David" used to be the equipment, construction and maintenance manager of a water park. One day he happened to be checking on a ticket booth and someone came up to that booth, said they were a friend of David and said that David said to let them in for free. David expressed his doubt, so the person said go ahead and call him over, implying that he would get in trouble with David if he bothered him about this. My brother-in-law then turned his back from the would-be freeloader, fished his "David" ID out of his pocket, slapped it on his shirt, turned around and laughed his ass off.

Reminds me of a place I used to work for. The business is named for the guy who started it, but he had passed a year prior when a door to door salesman dropped in and said they had just got off the phone with him...

Iā€™ve seen this exact repost, except the name was Jim or something.

As a British person it took me half the post to realise what kind of solicitor you meant. I really couldn't understand why you'd want correspondence from a solicitor (lawyer) going to a junk inbox

The 4th time in one week newspaper sales phone calls booted me out of the ICQ chat where I was trying desperately to figure out chemistry homework, I got emotional sounding on the phone when they mentioned my father's name and told them he'd died and please can't you just stop calling me while my mom is at work and...

They never did call back but my mother was PISSED when she figured out how I'd gotten them to leave us alone. My father laughed. "Hell as often as those assholes call I wish I had a death certificate to send them!"

As a Brit, this confused the crap out of me, because I could only imagine bad things arising from ignoring lawyers.

Does Alicia do freelance work? I may have a gig for her

A better/easier LPT: ā€œweā€™re not interestedā€. Sometimes you have to follow up, but twice does the trick. ā€œAs previously stated, weā€™re not interested, further communications will be blockedā€.

Saw the edit. If someone has to read all the emails and listen to all the voicemails, that takes the pro out, if not the whole tip. Was sad to see that. Is it really necessary?

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I'm not astounded a person can do multiple roles. Your reading comprehension is what is astounding.

The associate that we tell solicitors handles all of that at our company simply doesn't exist. She is made up. She handles everything from HR to janitorial supplies to fleet management, and she's not real.

So when these solicitors call and say that they have spoken to the non-existent associate and would like to be transferred back to her, I would say yes, that might just be the very definition of crazy.

Ok but if you use a real employee to monitor this then it isn't a fake employee you're just a dishonest liar. Lmfao.

Edit- it's important to note, someone at our company is responsible for monitoring her emails and voicemails to make sure that nothing actually important is missed

Yeah, this makes the whole thing a cluster fuck. Nicely created another layer of BS to wade through šŸ‘

Alicia appears to also handle the entire hr department of several companies people apply to

Lpt, get a bunbury

I have a voip phone that lets me block spam callers. I ask them once to take me off their call list. After that I block them. Seems easier.

Or, the person in your company responsible for such things could just say no.

at some point someone is going to use her for fraud

I have definitely read this somewhere before.

100% made up on OPs part

From some of the comments here, it's not that unique of a tactic. You probably did read it somewhere before.

Your post makes no sense. If you have someone who actually monitors those calls and emails, why do you even need to make up a fake person?

Because no one is ever available to take the call. So instead of tying up the phones, we just send them to the voicemail and email for the person who handles it to handle it on their own time. Almost all of it is garbage to us. Very few of them get emails back.

If you have to transfer to and monitor it anyway I do not see the point. Seems more efficient to just deal with it when it comes in to whoever it comes in to. I feel this is more joke than a pro tip to deal with solicitors.

We get so many. The person whose job it is to make those decisions is often too busy to deal with them as they come up. At least this way, if anything does end up in the inbox worth their time, they can address it on their own time instead of in the cold callers trying to meet a quotas time.

it's important to note, someone at our company is responsible for monitoring her emails and voicemails to make sure that nothing actually important is missed

what kind of bs is that, it means you technically do have the Alicia, she just doesn't pick up the phone

Eh sorta. It means that the person tasked with dealing with the barrage of sales calls and emails can do it on their own time instead of at the whim of cold callers.

so what stops the actual employee from doing just that without the Alicia decoy?

He's a busy guy who is usually unavailable and in meetings. And if we send them right to him or to his voicemail, they now have a name.

And now the csr are tasked with trying to distinguish a dishonest solicitor who "just spoke with Guy" from a person who we actually need to speak with, just because they have his name now.

This way, he can handle it when he chooses rather than the 30 times a day these people call, tie up our phone lines, and our csr.

Alicia has a dedicated assistant šŸ˜Š

My daughter used to handle the phones in a busy OB/GYN office and frequently got irate patients who would ask for her name to complain and she always said ā€œLindaā€. Her name is Katherine. Then they would come in and tell her how rude and unhelpful Linda was.

Just ignore them

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Not evil, just in our case, often unwanted

Ummm... no, just tell the vendor that you're not interested and tell them not to call you again. You're a business owner stand up and take responsibility.

why not just tell them no? why are you wasting your time with directing them to a fake person?

solicitor: hi there, id like to talk to you about x product

you: no thanks were good

sol: but we have an amaz-

you: you have yourself a nice day. *hang up*

done. no follow up, no monitoring emails or listening to voice mails because at that point, alicia becomes a real person.

No one else sees this as fraud?

[deleted]

Buddy, I read your reply 3 times and I can't understand what point your trying to make. You by a ticket to a concert, you show up and have problems. You call a number and send a email. They go to the fake person - that they ask you to make in this post about how to be a bad person. Flash forward, your email gos to a place no one is looking and you can't go to your concert. Then you send another email, and it goes again to this place that this person encourages "you" to make at your own job. How does the person whos just trying to get things answered in a timely manner wrong and should just keep speaking to a fake person, handle this?

That's not what a solicitor is.

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So you start a business, I follow you. When you register a business, does it say you can discriminate? Then let's jump to this. They are encouraging you to discriminate, but just act confused. Lets say your mother needs a kidney, can you push her to the ignore stack because they don't want to deal with her? That's the major point

[deleted]

I, not being a weak person and who works out often would not care. But if your saying I should ban Muslims because they often take about how they are chosen. I would also not. As long as they come in, pay, and then mind their business I would not see that as a issue.

But what your doing is taking away from what this thread is about. People wanting help, and then others discriminating against them.

This post was not " do not help anyone" this was encouraging people at their own "discretion" to help and not help people as they feel fit and how to get away with discrimination.

[deleted]

Great reply, glad you found a part of it you can address. The other 95% is lock tight as it seems. Have a great day

[deleted]

I won't, and please don't die trying to look for a soild excuse for your lack of education under a book.

Also I feel like I'm being put into a trap with your words and would like a couple different news storys of people announcing they are the chosen people and it being not well received for me to belive that your not trying to spew some anti one religion poison.

This is sort of like Brad my Roomate who owns the home. He works off shore and will be gone a month or longer so I canā€™t approve or accept any door to door sales. Could you maybe come back in a month when Brad is back so you can talk to him personally?

Of coarse Brad is always picking up double shifts out there on the oil rig. Dudes never home!

This is a terrible LPT. Salespeople want either a yes or no. Limbo land is what they despise.

Just tell the solicitor youā€™re not interested and politely decline. Thatā€™s what adults do.

What a waste of time. Just block solicitors and carry on.

How hard is it to tell someone "sorry, we arent interested" and hang up. This is a lot more effort to save face with someone you will never work with....

Not sure of the kind of company this alicia works in.

I would hope that this,and similar set-ups like this, are responses to some kind of malicious solicitation or like an ambulance chaser asking for a call back to discuss gaining a client.

And not as some kind of fobbing off or delaying in handling of requesting of say a client/patient or employees records.

Would really find this to be a shitty pro tip if it's simply to stall out time on legitimate records requests. And i would hope that this is a tactic more relevant to the likes of spam or advertisements from lawyers or marketers.

Does she live in 123 Fake Street?

Alicia sounds like she has fat titties and a perky ass!