Dear Abby agrees with The Dope on survey phone callers

[pravnik]

@runningdude

I think it is a fair criticism. Following the law, and following ethical practices, are not necessarily the same thing. Relocating a call center to the United States, to accept and make calls to Canadian residents, only to avoid paying Canadian minimum wage and taxes, is pretty sleazy.

That wasn’t what I was trying to ask, though (although I’m not crazy about relocating call centers either). I was asking if it’s fair to criticize all businesses in the U.S. for ignoring Canadian minimum wage law by paying less than what they would require there, the natural answer being that you wouldn’t word it that way. If you were critical of minimum wage here you might say that it’s unfair that the U.S. doesn’t have laws like Canada’s, or that it’s shameful that U.S. businesses don’t pay a living wage like they do in Canada, but you wouldn’t criticize a McDonald’s located in the U.S for paying U.S. citizens minimum wage on the grounds that they were ignoring Canadian law.

[Miller]

@pravnik

Okay, but even then I’d argue that if that was what she meant she’s being a bit naïve to expect more than what the law requires.

Not necessarily. You can think that something should happen, while knowing perfectly well that it’s not ever actually going to occur.

First, even if it’s a reasonable hypothesis that a high percentage of people who object telemarketers also object to opinion polls, that’s really, really hard to test. There are also people who hate telemarketing calls but feel grudgingly neutral towards opinion polls, or who even revel in the existence of opinion polls and want to kiss Nate Silver on the mouth. If it could be established as fact that everyone on the DNC list also refused to participate in surveys 100% of the time, that would be great for the survey companies, because they’d have a list of people to never waste their time on. Ironically, though, they can’t know that because there’s no way to do an opinion poll about the demographics of people who don’t do opinion polls - all of the respondents will be positive or neutral because everyone who hates them won’t participate. More concretely, a CEO of an opinion poll company who decided that his company was going to use the DNC list on the grounds that people who don’t want to hear from telemarketers might not want to answer opinion polls is getting fired and replaced as soon as the first quarter tanks, because clients are PO’d that their results are skewed by arbitrarily omitting people from the sample and because none of the company’s competitors are doing it. That’s my only beef with her comment, that bringing in what the law requires/allows muddies up the point of etiquette she’s making.

Actually, it would be really easy to figure out who doesn’t want to hear from opinion polls - create a second DNC list that applies specifically to opinion polls. They could have done that with the original list, too, by offering different levels of opting out. However, when Congress was writing the legislation to create the list, the opinion polling companies successfully lobbied to make themselves wholly exempt. Summing that up as “ignoring” the list isn’t the most precise way to explain what happened, but given that A) this isn’t a legal advice column, B) that there a very limited amount of space available to her to make her point, and C) even if someone does misread her and think she’s saying polling companies are breaking the law, the negative consequences to that misunderstanding are zero, I think what she wrote was an acceptable shorthand for explaining why a lot of people are as hostile to pollsters as they are to telemarketers.

[pravnik]

@Miller

Actually, it would be really easy to figure out who doesn’t want to hear from opinion polls - create a second DNC list that applies specifically to opinion polls. They could have done that with the original list, too, by offering different levels of opting out. However, when Congress was writing the legislation to create the list, the opinion polling companies successfully lobbied to make themselves wholly exempt. Summing that up as “ignoring” the list isn’t the most precise way to explain what happened, but given that A) this isn’t a legal advice column, B) that there a very limited amount of space available to her to make her point, and C) even if someone does misread her and think she’s saying polling companies are breaking the law, the negative consequences to that misunderstanding are zero, I think what she wrote was an acceptable shorthand for explaining why a lot of people are as hostile to pollsters as they are to telemarketers.

Eh, I still think she could have explained herself better if that was her point, but I’m willing to chalk it up to the zone of reasonable disagreement.

[runningdude]

@pravnik

That wasn’t what I was trying to ask, though (although I’m not crazy about relocating call centers either). I was asking if it’s fair to criticize all businesses in the U.S. for ignoring Canadian minimum wage law by paying less than what they would require there, the natural answer being that you wouldn’t word it that way. If you were critical of minimum wage here you might say that it’s unfair that the U.S. doesn’t have laws like Canada’s, or that it’s shameful that U.S. businesses don’t pay a living wage like they do in Canada, but you wouldn’t criticize a McDonald’s located in the U.S for paying U.S. citizens minimum wage on the grounds that they were ignoring Canadian law.

Ok, I traced this tangent back to its source…

@pravnik

She’s going to flip when she hears how many businesses there are operating in the U.S. that ignore Canadian minimum wage laws.

…and the best I can figure, is that you are making a vague point about it being silly to criticize businesses for not following laws that don’t apply to them. Its obscure point that I lost at some point in the first reading.

I, however, don’t think the analogy applies, because Dear Abbey was calling it rude to A) call people when they have asked to be removed from the pollster’s call list, B) placed themselves on the national Do Not Call list, and C) made other overt efforts to indicate they do not wish to be called by pollsters. At most, the analogy proves it is rude to pay workers here less than up in Canada.

The “Do Not Call” list was only one of several example she provided as evidence that many people do not want intrusive calls of any nature; rude to ignore, though not illegal to ignore.

[pravnik]

@runningdude

…and the best I can figure, is that you are making a vague point about it being silly to criticize businesses for not following laws that don’t apply to them. Its obscure point that I lost at some point in the first reading.

Yes, that was the point I was making.

@runningdude

I, however, don’t think the analogy applies, because Dear Abbey was calling it rude to A) call people when they have asked to be removed from the pollster’s call list, B) placed themselves on the national Do Not Call list, and C) made other overt efforts to indicate they do not wish to be called by pollsters. At most, the analogy proves it is rude to pay workers here less than up in Canada.

The “Do Not Call” list was only one of several example she provided as evidence that many people do not want intrusive calls of any nature; rude to ignore, though not illegal to ignore.

Like I told Miller, I still think she could have explained herself better if that was her point, but I’m willing to chalk it up to the zone of reasonable disagreement (or, see post above yours again ).