bi, bee, bye

the kodkod

the flat headed cat

the pampas cat

the andean mountain cat

the jaguarundi

Many telemarketers aren’t actually allowed to end a call without making a sale; if they did so voluntarily, they’d be fired. By corporate edict, that call was only ever going to end in one of two ways: with you buying something, or with you hanging up on them. There’s no point trying to end the conversation politely because the script they’re working off of demands that they ignore and obstruct any attempt to do so - and they will be punished for failing to follow it.

This is also an instance of a more general principle: notice when people are weaponizing social norms, and react by refusing to play the game.

Easy mode for this is the people on the street with pamphlets. They’ll weaponize social norms in an attempt to make you stop and talk to them. One script I see, for instance:

ACTIVIST: Hi! Excuse me, are you a student here?

PASSER-BY: –yes, I am.

ACTIVIST: Do you care about the ethical treatment of minorities on campus?

PASSER-BY: ….um, yes, but…

ACTIVIST: Were you aware that 90% of statistics about minorities are made up on the spot to serve as examples in tumblr posts?

PASSER-BY: …no, I wasn’t, but I really have to…

ACTIVIST: Here’s what our organization does to fight that!

…and so forth.

The trick here, of course, is that the first question is one which it’s socially unacceptable to avoid answering. If the activist opens with “would you like to help save a photogenic animal today?” you can say “no thank you.” If they open with “do you care about the whales?” you can grit your teeth and say “nope.”

But how do you respond to “are you a student here”? It’s a yes or no question, to which you definitely know the answer, so you can’t mumble something about not knowing. And it’s not explicitly related to their cause, so you can’t just automatically say “not today thanks.” (If you try either of those, they’ll call you on it – “what, you’re not a student today?”)

Ignoring them, or saying “that’s none of your business” or “leave me alone,” is a violation of social norms, and means you look like a jerk, because they asked a question that’s well within the realm of what’s socially permissible. So if you’re playing by social norms, you have to answer.

And then, once you’ve answered, you’re engaged in conversation with them. It’s an egregious violation of social norms to walk away from a conversation without going through the normal conversation-ending procedures. And they of course will not participate in those. So now you’re trapped, where you would have been free under social norms to walk past someone shouting at you about statistics if you hadn’t yet engaged with them.

The only way to escape these situations is to notice them and step outside the social game. This is hard; you will get intense this-is-awkward, I-am-being-awful-and-mean feedback from your brain, which has noticed you are violating the rules and would like you to stop. But walking away without saying anything, or saying “I don’t want to talk right now,” is in fact the correct thing to do here.

And that’s easy mode. People selling something play this game blatantly. Hard mode is people who play it expertly, within society, so that you have to go along with what they want or be forced into violating social norms. (And people will go along with a lot rather than violate social norms.) Friends who ask you for things in a way that makes it awkward to refuse. Family members who treat you badly but do it in a way contrived so that any complaint will constitute you being rude. In the really extreme cases, the same dynamic shows up in abusive relationships. It’s the adult version of an abuser convincing a kid he’ll get in trouble if he tells his parents.

There’s a reason that chuggers (“charity muggers”) frequently pick on women - female-socialised people find it harder to say “no” and walk away from a social interaction. Some of this may be due to fear of retaliation. Lots of situations in which “a stranger forces you into weird public engagement” can escalate horribly, so it’s often easier to just mumble along with them and contrive an escape. Rejection (of the chugger/catcaller/marketer) is something that sometimes leads to retaliation, so depending on your experiences you might find yourself being afraid to “just walk away.”

I have had two experiences where chuggers caught me in public and reacted badly to my flat rejections. They were both men chugging for Greenpeace, and I actually complained to the organisation about them. Because they’re playing on social norms as well, using aspects of themselves in the marketing performance, they can get waaay too invested and in-character, and treat it as a social/sexual rejection, apparently. One of them actually lost his head and chased me down the street, shouting.

Anyway the best way I found to stop both of them was to stand at bay and scream “STOP HARASSING ME”, which created such public amazement among the other people on the sidewalk that the chuggers had to put their hands up and back away.

With the chasing-guy he sort of did a defeated primal scream and went back to his pitch, presumably having come back to his senses. but the other guy just raised his eyebrows like “hey WOW fair enough” so it worked out okay.

The “fear of retaliation” is an incredibly important aspect of the social-awkwardness part of rejection, though. So I think it’s important to model how that can happen in aggressive-marketing situations. In fact, you have more power with marketers than when faced with a catcaller; you can get marketers fired for it, because there are rules about how marketing behavior is supposed to happen.

I know exactly what you’re saying, so I apologise for riffing on it, but I’m getting notes/activity that’s all bright and chipper and reccomennding doing the murderwalk to “simply not have the trouble in the first place” as if this is New Information.

And I think it’s a little unhelpful for people to be told “Well, just say ‘no’ and you won’t get into escalating situations” because that’s patently untrue, and doesn’t work in any sphere of life where you actually need it. And then when it does escalate, it automatically becomes a situation where “saying no and walking way” is ineffective because you’re already past that point. And it is deeply irritating for people who do end up having trouble: “Uhh why didn’t you practice the magic murder-walk ™ that makes people leave you alone? (insert gif of the lady doing the murderwalk) I do that and nobody’s EVER committted crimes against me, you should be more like me.” And it’s like, uhhhh well yes the murderwalk is great for walking past the drunk guy in the student hub, but when every pissed-off commuter in London is literally doing that at all times ANYWAY, then statistically a trained lancer in the Chugger Pack in a tube station Marketing Gauntlet is going to go for murderwalkers anyway, because they gotta make rent, and sometimes you’ll be one of them? It’s an evolutionary arms race. it doesn’t REALLY matter how you always walk past importunate homeless people while thinking about murdering Captain America, or whatever. You don’t get paid to do that, and other people DO get trained and paid to break into your personal bubble and sell things to you.

In conclusion: I think most people have, in fact, heard of the word “no”. Thus, telling them to “just use it” is not always that helpful (if you really want to help people). It’s like saying “if someone touches you, then do karate on them.” And if anyone has questions, then it’s like answering “just do karate! Do five karates!” and if it doesn’t work then it’s like saying “well, it’s because you didn’t do SEVEN karates.”

Abled Person: “Yes you can.”

Disabled Person: “Actually, no I can’t. I wasn’t putting myself down. I was just stating a fact. Everyone has some things that they’re able to do and some things that they’re not. This just happens to be something that I’m not able to do. Maybe there’s something similar that I can do but not exactly this. Maybe it doesn’t come natural to me but I can do it if you explain in detail how. By placing a high importance on one particular skill, you’re the one putting me down. I’m well aware that the only reason you’re defaulting to ‘yes you can’ is because you expect it to be a skill that everyone naturally has, which means you’re implying that there must be something wrong with me if I’m not able to do it.”

Abled Person: “Uh … Yes you can.”

Disabled Person: (gets angry) “No I can’t! You just ignored everything I said!”

Abled Person: “Geez! Why do you get mad so easily? I was just trying to help.”

…