The pandemic allowed me to work from home. For a long time. I actually wound up enjoying it, for the most part – short commute, savings on expenses, working 7:29 – 4:31 (most days) including the commute. What wasn’t to like?

The phone calls. The answer is the phone calls. While we use the free – and fantastic service of NoMoRoBo (No More RoBot calls), the phone still rang quite often. NoMoRoBo causes the phone to ring once while the service determines the validity of the call, but there were also quite a few that got through. Not because NoMoRoBo wasn’t good, but because the spammers would spoof their IDs to look like valid local calls.

There were times a call would come in, and Nomorobo would block it. Then five to ten seconds later, another call would come in and, as I said more than once to my wife without being able to see the Caller ID “NoMoRoBo”. Yes, the spammer would call, get hung up on by NoMoRoBo, then the spammer would call right back spoofing themself to look like NoMoRoBo.

Also, these spoofers, do they really think that I would want to conduct ANY business with them if they can’t even identify themselves properly? What sort of business practice is that? “We want you to think we’re Jane Smith from the same town as you, and do you want to renew your car warranty?” Hell no. Though maybe the warranty thing wasn’t a great example because, I mean, do people really fall for that anyway?

Most of this post was regarding being home and getting phone calls, but there were also office phone calls. As the use of computer collaboration tools increased, the number of seemingly random calls went down. And there were the occasional spam-like calls, but not nearly as many as there are at home.

So the problem really isn’t the number of calls at the office, but the number of calls at home. And since retiring will increase – or keep it at COVID levels – the amount of time being spent at home, I predict there will likely be no escape from the amount of phone calls. At least until the phone companies figure out how to authenticate the calls they are putting through…