Don't Be a Dingaling!

   As if stupid spammy recruiters weren't ALREADY enough of a pain, here's the latest.  It's not the usual sort of of spam (email), it's even more excruciatingly stupid because they're wasting their own time as well!

   My phone starts ringing, earlier today.  It's an unrecognized number.  So, I follow my Standard Operating Procedure: mute the ringing, and don't answer.  (Though my Bluetooth headset keeps buzzing, dagnabit.)  It stops... and then starts AGAIN.  Three more times.  Within SECONDS of stopping.

   I pick up the fourth time.  Maybe it's an emergency.  Maybe something happened to my brother, who's near that area code.  In any event, I'm getting sick of it.

   No, it's a recruiter with a thick Indian accent, calling about a Ruby on Rails job.  That's just about all I can make out, of what he's saying.

   This is exactly why my SOP is as above, due to spammy recruiters, politicians (who of course exempted themselves from the laws against robocalls), telemarketers, and other such scummy scammers.

   HINTS FOR PEOPLE CALLING (to me or anyone):

1. If I don't answer, JUST LEAVE A MESSAGE.  Maybe call back ONCE if you think you misdialed (and ignored the outgoing message that says whose phone it is).  There's probably a good reason I didn't answer.  Maybe I'm busy.  Maybe I'm out of the house.  Maybe I'm in the shower.  Maybe I'm on the toilet, and let my phone somewhere by accident.  In absolutely none of those situations, will continuing to call help you reach me.  Maybe you can think of a situation where it would, other than making it seem like an emergency, but I can't right now.
   
   
2. If for whatever reason you can't just leave a message, CALL BACK LATER!  Better yet, just send an email, so I can glance at the Subject line (assuming you are decent at writing those) and decide whether or not to investigate further.  If you continue to call RIGHT THEN, it makes it seem like an emergency -- and if it isn't, that makes YOU seem like an ASSHOLE!
   
   
3. Make sure your ENGLISH (or whatever language you are speaking) IS CLEAR.  It doesn't have to be perfect, even mine isn't, hell it doesn't even have to be Trump-level sentence structure.  But if I can't understand what you're even saying, I WILL NOT BUY WHATEVER YOU'RE SELLING, whether it's aluminum siding or a job.

   Poor English doesn't mean you're worth any less as a human being or whatever.  However, contacting people by phone in a language you don't speak clearly, is clearly not the right approach, especially if you first annoy them with repeated calls.  Try sending email instead; at least I can ignore it at my leisure, and take the time to parse small mispelllynges.  (Or maybe you're worried about your email being stopped by spam filters? If so, there's probably good reason for that.  Think about it.)