{"id":485,"date":"2006-02-20T17:38:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-20T17:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2006\/02\/20\/485\/"},"modified":"2006-02-20T17:38:00","modified_gmt":"2006-02-20T17:38:00","slug":"485","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=485","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

ENTERTAINMENT TIME: I’ve decided to offer my readers (all two or three of you) some audio entertainment. Here, for your downloading pleasure, is an MP3 audio file that I made from a series of messages on my answering machine. The messages seem to be from a bill collector who was trying to contact someone named Steve (that’s not me!). These messages were obviously wrong numbers, but they just kept coming every day for about a week. If you’d like to listen, here is the link:<\/p>\n

BillCollector.mp3<\/a><\/p>\n

The bill collector dude is using a variety of psychological techniques. He’s trying to be calm and professional, mostly. He needs to maintain the higher ground, to stay in control. But sometimes he injects assertion and even an air of threat (“you need to return the call”). And then he mixes in a bit of mock helpfulness (“we’re trying to help you”, “we have an excellent offer for you”). Plus some occasional exasperation (“we’ve left messages”). Most interesting.<\/p>\n

Luckily, I haven’t had any dealings with bill collectors; I don’t know any, have never worked as one, and (thank goodness) have never been hounded by one. So it’s interesting to hear a “collection account executive” in action, and ponder what techniques he’s using to earn his pay.<\/p>\n

After a week or so, the calls stopped. Perhaps the collection agent finally realized that he had the wrong number. Or maybe Steve started paying. Hopefully I won’t be privy to their dealings again. <\/p>\n

NOTE: The MP3 is about 1.84 MB. I made it, and I retain all rights to it. I zapped out the last names and scrambled the numbers so as to protect the guilty. You’re welcome to download it for free and to keep the file, so long as you use it for non-commercial purposes. You are not allowed to use it to make (or try to make) money. Trying to make money is probably what got Steve into trouble. So make your money some other way, and keep this thing pure, OK? Thanks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ENTERTAINMENT TIME: I’ve decided to offer my readers (all two or three of you) some audio entertainment. Here, for your downloading pleasure, is an MP3 audio file that I made from a series of messages on my answering machine. The messages seem to be from a bill collector who was trying to contact someone named […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}