Why you still need cash and how the system tracks you

For those who don't believe we're under constant surveillance by our phones, check this out.

Near the end of work today, around 4:15-4:20ish, a friend and I are discussing taxes. He was asking if I did my own or paid a pro. He was debating about what to do this year because it was the first time he sold a lot of his company stock. I told him about a CPA I've been using the last few years. From 4:27 through 4:51, I received 11, yes 11, robo calls. 6 were from tax relief services that left voice mails(which get converted to text) so it's probably safe to assume the other 5 were also.
4:27
4:28
4:30
4:35
4:42
4:43
4:44
4:46
4:48
4:49
4:51

The phone was ringing for some while the previous was still leaving a message. All showing a NY location and all 11 unique phone numbers. Absolutely ridiculous.

 

that's crazy! never happened to me

 

The real kick in the pants is YOU pay for the device and the connection plan - so who's do we really blame????

 

Was this discussion by regular phone voice? Text? Email? Or some other electronic mode?

 

I thought you could block unknown callers....

I have two phones on two networks but get almost no unsolicited calls - and I answer ZERO calls from unknown callers.
You can leave me a message

Anyone who has been through a natural disaster knows (or SHOULD know) why...'cash is king.'

 

Nope, I don't pay for any of it. Company issued iphone, free upgrade every two years. Unlimited everything including international.
Never had a problem this bad until recently. Has always just been normal robo stuff, but has recently gone crazy.

 

This was a face to face discussion. Phone in pocket.

 

Unfortunately, I have a lot of contractors that have my number, so I can't just completely ignore unknown numbers, which is why voice mails are automatically converted to text to make it quick for me to glance at it and see if it's something I need to respond to.

 

Well if it's a company phone, it's also a company leash. I had one of those and it goes into Do Not Disturb mode when I'm off the clock. They tried for years to get my personnel cell number and asked them why they needed it when they have my home number? We even went to HR over that. My defense was; management wanted to place me on 24x7 call without compensating me. Management's explanation was for emergency purposes and only a handful of us in the department refused and they wouldn't give us a stipend for use of our personnel phones.
After HR agreed with me; the following year, everyone in the department got a "business cell phone". The first thing I did was setup the do not disturb outside of paid business hours. Management is still piss at me for showing the people the department leans on heavily for technical support after hours how to block those after-hours calls. There's always someone on-call in my facility; If they can't do their job - that's management's problem. Otherwise; pay us for backup call status - it's management's fault for promoting incompetent people - That's usually when the "team work" lecture comes out.Those of us that has EARNED our positions, get tired of repeating ourselves to management spiddle-lickers...... Only the people I trust and the people that have my back; has my personnel number. I know I could trust them; because none of them leaked my personnel cell phone number to management over that two year fight. They only gave them my home phone number, which management already had. I even switched that to a cell phone, for the enhanced blocking features. Be careful what you wish for......

 

Sounds like a great reason for not having a cell phone at all.

 

I don’t even get junk mail anymore

 

I enjoyed the challenges that came after hours. The finding the transistor that was giving the compiler bad information so all the small business loans couldn't get processed. Finding the reason a night time run kept loosing billions of dollars in government assets. The joy on the clients face when they came in the next day and everything was normal. I felt I was part of the team and ultimately the company benefited from satisfied clients. But then I came from the military where you were on duty 24x7 and I never considered myself an hourly worker even though at the beginning I was. Ran around with company data in the trunk of my sports car so I could respond to a call. It wasn't every day I got called. But lots of people knew my number.

But when I wanted to go on a vacation with my wife for a month...sure thing. And when I retired did they pay me for all my accrued leave even though their was a lower limit.

You give a little to get a little.

 

That's the reason I NEVER gave them my personnal cell phone number; It's personnel...

I understand that; but what I found out was the "spittle-lickers" was allowed to charge back phone fixes - when someone called them. The rules were, if your not on-call, you don't get to charge back - but that rule only applied to some of us. When I found out about that; mister nice guy went out the window. After that, management's golden boys only solution to everything was to reboot the system. On-Call pay was a fraction of your base pay, which reverted to 1.5x or 2x after 12 hours. It was funny that us old timers would only take an hour or two to fix a problem w/o taking down the entire system - while the golden-boy would routinely take 12+ hours and several system IPL's, while dragging in the OEM software vendor. In most cases, they would wait until Monday for one of us experts to nail it down for them.
That's what happens when management plays favorites.....

 

If you think our civil liberties are in danger now just WAIT until they combine the power of AI with it! (I'm not talking about government, I'm talking about corporations.)

This will push a LOT of folks to ditch the "smart" phones for the old-school "dumb" phone that is just used for texts and calls.

Someone mentioned what would happen if we had a massive hit on our telecommunications and most generations would be just fine....Gen Z'ers would want to kill themselves but wouldn't be able to Google it so they'd, also, be fine!!