Who I Am Is No One Else’s Business
As this just happened, I thought I’d come right home and write about it. I just had one of those customer service incidents that sends me over the moon.
I walked into a store to find something. I was in a frame of mind to buy. I found the something and asked the sales person “How much is that?” Back at her desk, she sat down, I sat down, and I expected her to punch up the price on her computer and tell me.
Image by Lost Albatross at Flickr (creative commons)
Instead: “What’s you name?”
“Private individual,” I replied, a bit nonplussed.
“I need a name for the quote,” she said.
“You have to have it?”
“Yes.”
“Have a nice day.”
And I walked out.
Now, this was perhaps petty of me. What, after all, is the big deal? She needed to punch a name into her computer to open the dialogue box to ask for the price.
Here’s the big deal: IT’S NONE OF YOUR DAMN BUSINESS WHO I AM UNTIL I DECIDE TO BUY FROM YOU!
This is a persistent and infuriating condition in our present society that causes me no end of irritation because so few people think it is a problem that I end up looking like a weirdo because I choose not to hand out private information for free.
It has crept up on us. Decades ago, when chain stores began compiling mailing lists by which they could send updates and sale notices to their client base. Then they discovered they could sell those lists to other concerns for marketing. Now we have a plague of telemarketers, junk mail, spam, and cold calls and a new social category with which to look askance at people who would prefer not to play. Like me.
In itself, it is an innocent enough thing. But it is offensive, and what offends me the most is my fellow citizens failing to see how it is offensive and how it on a deep level adds to our current crisis.
Look: if telemarketing didn’t work, no one would do it. A certain percentage of those unwanted calls actually hook somebody into buying something. Direct mail campaigns have an expected positive return rate of two percent. That is considered normal response and constitutes grounds to continue the practice. Economies of scale work that way. So if only two to five percent of the public respond favorably to the intrusions of these uninvited pests, they have reason to persist.
I think it might be fair to say that people with money and education don’t respond as readily as poorer, less educated folks who are always on the lookout for bargains—and often find bargains they don’t understand and probably end up costing them too much, like sub prime mortgages.
We are too free with our personal information. Maybe you or you or you find nothing wrong with always giving out your phone number or your zip code or even your name and address when asked, in Pavlovian response to the ringing bell behind the counter, but what has happened is that we have made available a vast pool of data that makes it easy to be imposed upon and that has aided and abetted a consumer culture that has gotten out of hand.
And made those of us who choose not to participate in this look like some form of misanthropic libertarian goofballs.
How hard is this? If I choose to buy from someone, then I have agreed to have a relationship, however tenuous, with them. Unless I pay cash, they are entitled to know with whom they are dealing. But if I’m not buying, they have no right to know who I am. And I can’t know if I’m going to buy if I don’t know how much the object in question is. Trying to establish the buying relationship in advance of MY decision to buy is…rude.
I have walked out of many stores when confronted with a request for personal information. I’ve had a few shouting matches with managers over it. In some instances, the unfortunate salesperson is as much a victim, because some software programs these days have as a necessary prerequisite for accessing the system the entry of all this data. The corporation won’t even let the employee make the call whether it’s worth irritating someone over collecting all this information.
Concerns and worries over Big Brother have a certain validity, but it is largely unremarked that the foundation of such a system will not be imposed on us—rather we will hand the powers that be what they ask for because we can’t muster up enough sense of ourselves to say, consistently, “None of your damn business!”
There. I feel better. I needed to get that out. This rant has been brought to you by Consumer Culture LTD.
I do carry around a pocket-full of H’s at all times. There’s a longer story to it all. I was born “Richard” and Erich is a spelling that retains the name I used until I was 18: “Rich.”
I just left a medical office, as I entered the receptionist asked for my Social Security Number.
I asked her if I were “applying for credit, or was there a law which required me to give you my SSN?
“No, it’s policy.”
“Well, I have a policy of getting the name, address, telephone number and SSN of anyone who requests my information, so we’re on equal terms,” I replied. “Or I may need to sue you, your employer or anyone else who misuses my confidential financial information, so may I have your name, address, date of birth, SSN, and phone number?”
“Sir, you don’t have to be difficult,” she said. “I’m only asking you the same questions everybody else routinely gives answers to for our offices.”
“That’s fine, and all I’m asking you is the routine questions which I ask of every person who asks me for confidential financial information, before I give out any such information so we’re on an equal footing.”
“Oh.”
“Now do you REALLY need my SSN?”
“No.”
“Thank you, here’s my insurance card.”
My wife hates when I do this, so I try not to do it when she’s around but, if I have to…
Every day we give up more and more of our privacy and do so without thinking. All I want is to be generally left alone except when I allow or want someone to be in communication. The current corporate/government milieu is such that there are more and more demands for information such that it is inevitable that some part of our most private, confidential information is becoming more and more available where we may be used, abused or refused based upon factors of which we are wholly unaware.
So, I’m Tim Hogan. If you want more give me the same information (or more)!
Just a comment to those folks who use fake names and so forth in these instances. I can understand that, I do, because you want to protect your privacy and still do business—but it’s the least direct way to break this system down. A categorical refusal to play would, in the course of a month, make it stop. It’s not so much ME that I’m trying to protect, as the IDEA of privacy. I don’t want to give them false information when they ask, I want them to STOP ASKING.
Just sayin’, y’know?
I think I’ve discovered the absolute only thing good about self-serve checkout after reading this thread. (I don’t care if it’s 11PM and there’s only one cashier - I will wait in that line until I get a discount for checking my own purchases!)
I put myself and my husband on do not call and do not mail lists, and it has helped a great deal with the daily invasions of privacy at home. I never gave much thought to the use of my information when I made purchases, though. Most of the time, since I was purchasing with a credit or debit card, the sellers already had an in on my personal info. So far, I haven’t been asked for anything under other circumstances, but now I’ll be paying more attention.
Ahhh, good point, Mark. Hadn\’t thought of that, but that makes sense. They ask because they use the information to inundate us with junk mail, unsolicited phone calls and information ad nauseum. Would be nice to lay that to rest once and for all!
Tim, If I recollect correctly, a persons SSN is only for official Social Security Administration use. No one can require your SSN for any business transaction not related to official SSA business.
This sure is interesting food for thought. Never gave it a second of my time to even contemplate, but those calls selling you double glazing, kitchens, insurance, advertising, etc. at any given time of the day and night, indeed are most irritating.