I work for a million dollar “market research company”, its a casual gig, call people, survey them, and go home. So I am on the 4th hour of my calling, I am meeting all the performance indicators (2 successful interviews/hr). The software calls up a random number, a woman picks up and says she isn't sure how much help she'll be to me, and that she is 94 year old living in an old age home. I tell her its okay (Idc how old the interviewee is, as long as they fit our quota). Eventually she tells me how her husband recently passed away, and about her kids living in another state, and overall starts sharing her life.
Normally, they expect us to ask again if they want to do the interview, and if they continue sharing/talking to just apologise and hang up and move on the next call. But I felt really bad, I could tell she doesn't get many people to talk to and was likely quite lonely. So I spoke to her on the phone for 10 minutes or so, and she thanked me for a great conversation.
She said “I am always getting disturbed by people pressuring me to take the survey, but you have been a very nice young man, thank you”
When she said that, I decided to add her to our “NOCALL List”. Now, officially, we're only allowed to do that when the person specifically asks to be removed from the database or call list.
Couple of minutes later, our supervisor (who had been listening in on the call) calls me up, and chews me out for wasting company time, and he manually went back and removed her number from the no call list, because “you can't follow rules”. This is the “work culture” these mega companies talk about.
Unempathetic little fucks!