Tele-sales.
A huge amount of years ago, in my first *real* job, I worked in a call centre.
If 95% of calls were answered by midday, then we were afforded a 1 hour lunchbreak (would be 30 mins otherwise) and a 15 minute break in the afternoon (would be just enough time to buy a coke from the machine and get back to your desk otherwise).
Of course, if a full page national newspaper ad was put out that day, then that made no difference. If was simply impossible to answer more than about 60% of calls in those instances.
So, people would simply answer the calls, and then cut (potential) customers off straight away, and get to the next call to do the same ad nauseum - that is, until after midday of course.

I can't believe that they employed this tactic as an 'incentive' and didn't foresee what 260 18-22 year olds (the ages of pretty much everyone in the call center - this was before minimum wage, so people of this age would be more likely to take a lower wage) would do when faced with it.

It's probably impossible to quantify the lost revenue, but I would bet it's in the millions each year.
(dchurch bah, Mon 14 Jun 2010, 16:38, Reply)