Rudely Hanging up on an Opinion Pollster

The other day, I received a call I thought was spam. But fifteen seconds in, I learned it was from an opinion pollster asking about my political opinions. I was in a rush and did not have that much time, but for a long time, I was interested in the industry of polling and how pollsters do what they do and get their results on national opinion and the pulse of the country.

I thought it was going to be interesting, and I thought was going to be asked about national politics, and what I thought about Trump, Democrats, the state of the country, and more. I was open to being polled, which is why I stayed on the phone and entertained the conversation.

The pollster asked me what I thought about a random county executive race I had never heard about before. Logically, this county executive position likely impacted my life just as much, if not more, than the presidency, but I just was not very interested. They asked me questions about the candidates running for the race, only one of whom I’d heard of before from seeing his name in the news. I told the person various times I was not interested and wanted to hang up, only for her to tell me we were “almost done” despite being nothing close to being done. This happened for about 13 minutes before I was actually really in a rush to get out the door and hung up on her.

In hanging up and trying to get this pollster off the phone, I was pretty dismissive and borderline rude by hanging up on her. I usually am very polite to strangers, but over the phone, I have, like many Americans, been bombarded by spam calls about credit cards, debt relief, people pretending to be from the IRS or from my credit card company or car insurance company. I usually find out it’s not very legitimate early on in the call and hang up.

However, I stayed on the phone for this conversation and my tone grew more and more impatient the longer we stayed on the phone. I understand this lady may not have been in the best situation, either. She was just doing her job, and she likely wasn’t being paid a lot and probably had to get used to people cussing her out all the time, and I browsed online forums to learn that being an opinion pollster for this firm in particular was a very undesirable job that wasn’t particularly well-paid.

I don’t trust polling because, since Trump, most polls have been pretty far off in underestimating the support of Donald Trump in three straight presidential elections, and as a result, as a liberal, I have been lulled into a false sense of security. He is a somewhat unique phenomenon that defies the conventions of polling, data, and statistics, and has for the last decade. That is why learning more about polling stood out to me at the time.

But I have never personally seen how polling is actually done. I’m not saying every opinion pollster tries to keep you on the phone and asks you a bunch of questions of whether you “strongly agree,” “agree,” “disagree” or “storngly disagree” with several particular statements, but I didn’t find it necessarily the most representative way to find out how someone thinks, or to get an average of how Americans think. I said numerous times, “I’ve never heard of [this political candidate] before” as the pollster tested what I thought of various political slogans or political messaging campaigns.

Two pollsters who spoke with PBS say that phone calls are the main way polls are conducted. Now, however, half of opinion polls are now conducted through online panels, some of which are opt-in panels that reward people for joining, and some of which survey people and ask them to join the panel. The industry is changing and adapting to modern times.

But this wasn’t a poll about Trump or national politics. It was about a position of which I had no clue how it impacted my day-to-day life at all, of a position I had no emotional investment in, unlike my representative, senator, or president. Somehow, I came away trusting polling even less than I did before.

Perhaps that personal disappointment played an impact on my lack of engagement in the conversation, and perhaps I felt my boundaries were crossed a bit when saying “I have to go” wasn’t respected a few times.

But this isn’t an indictment on the polling industry. I felt bad about hanging up on the pollster in my impatience and feeling inconvenienced. Moreover, I reflected on my overall distrust of phone calls from people I don’t know amidst a bombardment of getting multiple spam calls a day.

I think I am just ruder over the phone now than I used to be, unfortunately. I did my best to be polite to this lady, trying to be considerate of what she was going through and her situation.

I didn’t snap at her or say anything incredibly rude personally. My default is to be nice and polite to strangers, and I believe in the Biblical golden rule of treating your neighbor as you would like to be treated. Despite feeling like I was being kept on the phone despite not wanting to, I would like to think there could have been another way to handle it, especially if I had kids and they were watching as an example.

But I can tell my tone was more annoyed, bothered, and inconvenienced. I tried to be polite and not let it slip through, but I can tell it did, so it’s something I know I can work on.

As a special education teacher, I often call parents unsolicited all the time and have to tell them bad news, some of which ruins their days. I appreciate when the difficult conversations are cordial and cooperative rather than hostile and adversarial. Not every conversation is cordial and cooperative and I know sometimes, difficult conversations are just a part of the job. I do believe, perhaps naively, that even in the worst of circumstances and the worst of days, we should treat each interaction with kindness and respect.

But I fall short in my religious values and ideals plenty of times, and this was one example. It was a human lapse for which I will just try to do better in the future. I am often known for presenting as calm and never losing my cool, so it’s rare to even have my tone be compromised.

Something about spam callers does bring out a ruder, more impatient part of me. It makes me feel like my time is being wasted, because it is. A few weeks ago, a call I received from someone who said he was a vehicle warranty representative told me my vehicle warranty had expired. I knew it was a scam and bogus call right away, but I didn’t hang up.

I wanted the gratification of exposing the scam. When they said they received information about my car warranty from my vehicle financier, I asked who the financier was, and they could not answer. When they told me I needed a new warranty for my vehicle, I asked, “what’s the vehicle?” to which they could not answer. I could have hung up seconds into the call, but I made it my mission for a few minutes to call out the caller for not being legit instead of going about my business and continuing with my day.

There was a time I was almost duped by a scam caller. As much as other people recognize me as a pretty smart person, I almost fell for this one. The caller told me my card had been used for a $17,000 purchase in China. They also knew some very personal information, like the last four digits of the card (I don’t remember which detail exactly, but do remember it feeling legit). I thought for a second that my card was actually used for credit card fraud. I only sensed it was a bogus call once I didn’t see the charge on the card. I also started a conversation with someone in the office, at which point the caller suddenly hung up when they heard another voice. But I did realize falling for these calls snd scams could happen to anyone, and thinking it could never happen to you or that you’re not stupid enough to fall for it is just hubris.

I think most of my tone involves being exasperated by the sheer volume of spam calls I am currently getting from callers I don’t know. Despite this pollster not really being a spam caller, I did mentally cluster that call into the same category. Maybe that wasn’t fair, but it was my natural reaction, perhaps coming from feeling like another number and statistic rather than a human being who actually wanted to listen to me.

Regardless, I think I can do better in a couple of areas, and I know getting calls like this is something we are all experiencing. If I am annoyed and exasperated at getting yet another call I perceive as spam, I can just hang up instead of continuing the conversation in a frustrated and annoyed state and tone.

I still believe in the importance of kindness in a world of bad actors, spam and unsolicited phone calls. It might not matter to a lot of people, but it did matter to me — next time I’ll do better.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.