Everybody who isn't self-employed spends hir life following orders which range from benign to malevolent, but grelber's example was, indeed, over the top...although not by very much.
In this particular instance, though, there are people who's job is to be canon-fodder, so I fire "when I see the pink of their eardrums". As I said, it's cathartic. I'll NEVER reach a point at which I'll be indifferent to invasions of my privacy, regardless of ultimate culpability.
Here's a tip: My experience has been that when I get a spam phone call there's
invariably a several second delay between when the auto-dialer recognizes that it's got a "live one" and when the "poor schnook" or, as the case may be, recorded message picks up, so if I say "Hello" and don't get a response in pretty much a heartbeat...I hang up.
