I usually encounter this with pest cold-calls, preceded by a robotic greeting and query. Somebody comes on with a Hindi accent that could run from Mumbai to Calcutta. I just call them out on having an impenetrable accent and that I have no interest in talking to someone I can't understand. I think that offends them, but I have rung off by that point.

Another modern symptom is their habit of opening with "Hello, (my first name)." I usually take this as an opportunity to remind them that in English-speaking countries, it is proper manners of respect to address a stranger as "Mr. (surname)," as we are not on friendly acquaintance. Then I say, "Which (first name) do you wish to speak with?" They are usually servile enough to comply with the education.

But, honestly, there are plenty of native English-speakers that have terrible enunciation and do not speak up. Most annoying are the young women who speak in cozy, murmuring voices, trying to be demure or something. It is more like listening to winds on a distant seashore.

Heh. Years ago, when I was visiting USA, I rented a car. Now I mostly have no problems with native speakers, or they with me, although I do have a definite accent. So no problems when I got it because I was speaking face to face with an American. But then something happened that made me need to extend the time I had it, by about 3 days. And I wasn't near any of their brick-and-mortar offices. So I call customer service.

Pretty heavy, I assume Indian, accent. And as said, I have a definite Finnish accent. I say that I need the car for 3 more days, and would return it to a different city. Let's say Chicago, while I was currently somewhere in Kentucky.

The person on the other end says something like "okay, a month more, and you return it to Florida?"

COME ON, my English isn't THAT bad...

Took nearly half an hour to get that cleared up. She didn't seem to get anything I said right, and I had hell of time understanding what she was saying. We managed in the end, but what should have been at most a ten minute call, yep. About half an hour. And for several moments during that time I was considering driving to the nearest city where that rental firm had an office.

You are absolutely correct.

customer service is obviously a ruse. people should really learn the way business works. econ 101 classes for all. guess what? businesses with customer support dont actually want to make your life easy. they want to upsell you or put you on hold and then disconnect when they transfer your call.

Tariffs will fix this problem as well. No more outsourcing.

Yep. Sometimes, I respond with, "Well, if your name is Paul, my name must be Mahatma Gandhi." I don't think this goes over very well, but I don't stick around long enough to find out.

Yes even your neighborhood, Joe, Billy or Mack from down the street and even Johnny on the pony waving his pom-poms would be better.

A.I. is just an encyclopedia in the form of a pinball machine. The trick is to derail its script tree. Sometimes, I get robot calls for medical insurance pushers, and the robot asks me how old I am. I answer "Oh, four hundred and thirty seven years." There is a pause and a click as it disconnects.

There is another scam question where they try to get you to "confirm that you have Medicare part A and part B." I answer, "I can confirm I have a P***S. Do you want to talk about that?" Click.

It's a game. The robot asks, "Do you have any other medical problems?" I answer, "I have three heads." It responds, "Oh, that's interesting" and resumes the spiel.

The robot asks, "Do you have a moment to speak to one of our representatives?" I answer, "No, I'm being chased by flaming wombats." "Well, this won't take much time..." "You're darn right!" and I slam down the phone.

They try to get clever. Upon hearing an objection from the person being called that the caller is a robot, the script has some nonsense about "Oh, that may be because my microphone is processed through a computer, but..." At which point, I generally yell at them, "No, you are a robot because you fucking do not listen!" and hang up.

I mainly answer in a neutrally pleasant way---until I hear the telltale signs (like the "blip" that signals the call transfer from the automatic caller to the robot receptionist or sometimes directly to the boiler room). Being pleasant is totally wasted and actually unjust if extended toward persons who lie to you about who is calling you, and give you bullshit answers.

In the spirit of making lemonade out of lemons, take these opportunities to abuse the fools who intrude on your day.

Very good point. This is also one of my complaints: that phone set developers have spent more attention to providing computer bandwidth than audio fidelity. Cellphones, for example, have terrible acoustics for hearing the other party. The old Bakelite handsets of dial phones were better shaped for hearing than anything provided today.

OK, more than sometimes

Well that one was news to me. At the same time theres was a fabricated tweet that was spreading like wildfire. Im not defending Elon, at the same time he's not the one who's going to influence or have the final say on H-1B. I said it on another thread that its a big miscommunication error. Plus that fabricated tweet in the mix. Even if the community notes are applied its already too late.

Problem is, its not a few. It's priority. If you're an American, you're not getting any IT jobs. Maybe a contract one, but no permanent, and you can't support a family jumping contracts. You'll get kicked out if you even mention possible full time employment. I've lived and suffered it

Seriously we are taking about 0.01%. Also Musk wants to overhaul the H1-B visa to assure that no one’s is taking advantage of it. I do agree currently it’s being abused but I don’t disagree with Musk that admitting more highly skilled workers would be an advantage for the US once that program has been cleaned up and reset to its standard. I’ll take a skilled worker from Japan over that libtard college indoctrinated brad any day. Also why wouldn’t we want them here as opposed to them working for the enemy or advancing the rest of the world while we get left behind. Once we clean up our educational system perhaps enough people from our future generations will have devolved skills that are on par with these foreigners and even other very intelligent Americans. Fact is in America we just don’t have enough highly skilled individuals as our children and our selves have been dumbed down and reduced to “mediocrity”. We can’t ignore this fact and allow our egos to be hurt when faced with the truth. Tv and entertainment plays a big part in this as does our culture. We need to admit this is the state we have been led to and then find a way to move forward and higher up in the future. The “everyone gets a trophy” philosophy have seriously failed us and only caused a major inflation of egos in this country.

It's entire industries. It's about white replacement with, in this case, indentured servants (which is illegal). Only H1Bs are worse than indentured servitude because the indenture never ends.

American's won't put up with the dictatorship that our corporate overlords want to implement in the workplace. H1Bs are tied to a single employer and they get evicted from the US if their employer doesn't want them any more. IOW they're more disposable than the indigenous population (that's us).

H1B visas are fraudulently obtained by employers, and are pure evil from top to bottom.

He's not doing that, himself. It's carried out by staff and algorithms. This has happened before and in instances where it was wrong, he reversed it. Keep in mind if this is a massive psyops, and with mossad asset Loomer involved I'm inclined to believe it is, they're going to use tactics like this. IE, divisive stances within the party designed to split the camp, complimented by 'bans' to further polarize the sides taken. When in reality, controlled opposition accounts can force a ban or just get enough reports to automate it via the algorithm. Coupled with a contentious subject like H1B and boom, you have a powerful psyops designed to divide and conquer.

your assuming these accounts are not breaking the rules...

dont turn into the extreme left. protecting grifters.

I sympathize. My wife is a resident alien from Zambia and is working toward her naturalization. A very indirect and unplanned trajectory. One thing we found out was that there was a path through enlisting in the U.S. military. After a few years of honorable service one can become a citizen. Ironically, she aspires to work for DHS as an investigator, because she knows who in the African community are overstaying their visas, etc. She thanks America for saving her life and nurturing it as an adult. She was pro-Trump before Trump came on the political scene.

Perhaps make it only possible to get permanent residency after 10 years of marriage and co-habiting with no criminal record. Then another 10 years of the same before gaining citizenship. Or ditch the citizenship part altogether.

Thank you. Yes, I think this could be the win / win. I can understand Elon being sensitive to this. He was also foreign born & wants to help people, like himself, who were naturally brilliant but not born here.

Let us be the land of opportunity that we always used to be. In the old days immigrants would work jobs beneath them just so their children would be Americans. The swamp turned all that on it's head & are bringing in the worst foreigners to bring us down. That, of course needs to stop. (& I have full faith Tom will do a great job there) but let's also go back to being a magnet for the smartest & brightest in the world. Leaving our door open to them will only bring us up. They would be so happy at the opportunity that they won't mind that there's an extra tariff. They will just be happy at for the opportunity to be able show how capable they are in the greatest county on earth. They just want that chance and it makes us what the most capable in the world want to be part of. It makes us GREAT AGAIN. (And, in a way, they are paying for that opportunity ;)

Part of making America Great again is about giving Americans the freedom that our forefathers fought & died for. Part of that freedom is allowing us to hire whoever we want to. I think having a tariff on hiring a foreigner gives employers that freedom while still giving Americas an edge against foreigners for the same job. (In other words it would not be worth while to hire a foreigner to save money because they will have to pay extra for this "work tariff: However, American businesses still have the freedom to hire, say the next Elon Musk, even though he is a foreigner, if they see a lot of potential in them. They will just have to pay an extra 'work tariff'. This 'work tariff' is a new thing I am proposing)

Forcing businesses to have to hire a certain way just seems to bureaucratic & socialist to me. Let's get the government OUT of hiring practices. Let businesses hire as they wish, just make them pay an extra "work tariff' for every dollar their foreign employee makes.