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I did something rude, today!

I am baffled by this. Has it ever happened in your lifetime that someone has shown up at your door to bring you good news?

It's not that uncommon :shrug:

In fairness though most people who actually know me also know the door's unlocked and just walk in
 
I hang up - well, actually it's touching a little icon on a screen - on all sales calls and solicitations as soon as I recognize them as such.
 
I try not to be rude, but if I am in a particularly good mood, I will play with them. One time, I had a call from “Microsoft.” I was told there was a terrible virus on my PC. So I pretended to panic, sat the phone next to my desk, and hit a box of useless computer parts with a baseball bat, screaming for the demons to leave. Then I picked up the phone, and calmly stated that I had fixed the problem by destroying the virus. I then followed up with “it’s a good thing you’re from Microsoft so I can tell HP that you authorized this action. I’ll need your name and ID number, please.”

<click>

And they’ve yet to call me back.
 
Yeah, admittedly, there's that, and sometimes the schools fundraising by selling goods works too. Other than that though?
What about a next door neighbor, running from her abusive husband/boyfriend and quickly needs a safe place to call the police?
 
I try not to be rude, but if I am in a particularly good mood, I will play with them. One time, I had a call from “Microsoft.” I was told there was a terrible virus on my PC. So I pretended to panic, sat the phone next to my desk, and hit a box of useless computer parts with a baseball bat, screaming for the demons to leave. Then I picked up the phone, and calmly stated that I had fixed the problem by destroying the virus. I then followed up with “it’s a good thing you’re from Microsoft so I can tell HP that you authorized this action. I’ll need your name and ID number, please.”

<click>

And they’ve yet to call me back.
If people lie to me like that, I just tell them that's a strange coincidence as I work for Microsoft Internet Security - they put the phone down straight away. I adjust my claimed role as necessary for whatever scammer is calling. Saves time and they end up being the ones being rude but who cares anyway.

ETA: I was cold-called by someone claiming to work for my ISP once, trying to sell me some cable package or other. Before they would offer me a quote for the package, they wanted me to tell them the entire password for my account. "Hello, you called me - how do I know you are who you say you are?" They just didn't seem to get this even when I explained. In the end, I said "sorry, we're wasting our time in pursuing this conversation" and put the phone down. The next time someone from the company called me, they quoted three random character from my password to prove who they were. I like to think I was instrumental in causing that change. I still didn't want to buy the cable package though.
 
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Some people take messing with the scammers to a whole new level:
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