I’m glad to see more action is being taken on this.
Over a decade ago, I worked in a shop that involved handling phone numbers, and at the time there were constant stories of co-workers starting relationships by initiating a conversation as a “customer satisfaction follow up” to their experience that day.
Keeping those people in line was a tale of someone getting decked by a customer’s father after doing this.
I used to work for a contact centre doing tech support, and one of my colleagues did this (keeping it deliberately vague because there’s a BBC news article about it floating about), and it was huge news at the time - noted down a woman’s number and started trying to flirt with her afterwards. It caused a massive drama, and widespread data handling regulations where introduced in the wake of it.
Now, it seems to be almost normal, if the 30+% figure is accurate.
What is wrong with these people?
Now, it seems to be almost normal, if the 30+% figure is accurate.
That number (for London) is so high it’s pretty outrageous. It suggests this happens but a lot of people don’t mention it (at least to me) - only example I can think of is a friend got a few quotes to get the bathroom redone and one guy started getting sufficiently flirty that they just blocked him. There was a feature on the radio (presumably Women’s Hour) about how female plumbers and electricians are getting so many enquiries that they can’t even pass the work on to other women in the trade (of which there are still embarrassingly low numbers) as they’re all fully-booked to.
I’d be fucking livid if this happened to me.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Nearly a third of young people have had unwanted propositions from “text pest” staff at firms that have their personal details, the UK’s data watchdog says.
Emily Keaney, the deputy commissioner of the ICO, said that her office was prompted to commission the study by a BBC Radio 5 Live report in May by two members of staff who were victims and told the station she was “struck” by what was found.
“The number of people that this is happened to is really concerning,” she told 5 Live, adding that she had launched a call for evidence from other victims to fully gauge the extent of the problem.
“People have the right to order a pizza, or give their email for a receipt, or have shopping delivered, without then being asked for sex or a date a while later,” said Ms Keaney said in an earlier statement.
“If you are running a customer-facing business, you have a responsibility to protect the data of your customers, including from your employees misusing it,” Ms Keaney added.
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The original article contains 665 words, the summary contains 210 words. Saved 68%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
On the other hand, I’d like to know if any successful love stories came from this.
Talk about fruit of the poisonous tree!
The ratio of positive to negative situations is probably very very low.
It’s not impossible, I suppose, but on the other hand we really don’t want to condone this by highlighting it if it has happened once or twice.
I hate the modern world.
