This happened in Finland, but I didn’t want to specify it to spark a universal conversation, which succeeded!

I know people from all around the globe deal with privacy issues and hoped that others would share their experiences.

This is another great idea. Similar to having extra email for spam.

That’s the advice I’ve gotten here pretty much, and will probably deal with it in that way from now on!

It is sad that we have to do that, but don’t think this will change any time soon.

Haven’t looked into VOIP phone numbers before, thanks for the tip!

Could have been that too. I was polite and didn’t fuss about it thankfully!

100% would never want to make their day tougher than it already probably is.

This hermit politely declined, paid, thanked, and left. The anger I felt was towards the retail company and the clerk doesn’t need to witness that.

Very true, this is nothing new and just wanted to stop for a moment and rant about my mundane experience and love the the discussion this sparked here!

Holy shit, now that is smart thinking! I can’t believe he already made 300 pounds from listening to marketing calls!

Yeah, I’m a bit sad that even offline shopping is showing clear signs of dark patterns, but guess it is just so.

Nothing against someone just doing their job though. Can’t always choose where you get your living from.

That’s probably exactly what I’ll be doing from now on. Was hoping for the simple “would you like to join?” but guess that’s out of style.

I did politely decline and didn’t want to make a fuss about it - the title is bit exaggerated and from outside perspective it probably wasn’t that dramatic.

I know that the cashier is just doing their job and I didn’t want to make their day any harder than it probably already was. I smiled, thanked and left right after paying.

Hope I don’t sound like a karen, just wanted to share my mundane experience in this community since I really love the discussion that is going on in this thread. I do hope that all of us in this community still remember the human when interacting with people in the real world.

That could also work, if their system allows more digits than the standard digit length of their own phone numbers.

I’ve bumped into this issue myself when trying to fill my second phone number into input fields which require me to pass a number I actually use at the moment into systems where I do want to give them my phone number…

Very good point, it seems to be the most popular advice in this thread and will try this next time!

Yeah the title is a bit of an exaggeration of my feelings and as you mentioned, I was a bit anxious too since I have been abroad for quite a long time (and encountered something I did not expect in what I thought was an environment that could not surprise me).

Agreed, it could very well be that I was the first customer to question since the cashier started working there.

Thanks for the uplifting comment!

Thanks for the input! This kinda answered a question that popped into my mind: do the employees get bonuses for registrations.

And exactly, it felt too intentional to leave out the question, didn’t feel “natural” the way the phone number topic came up.

I know we are constantly being harvested for every little bit of data online, but it creeps me out when I encounter information “harvesting” by just talking to a store clerk.

Nice of them to atleast offer an alternative!

Appreciate people like you!

You made me question myself now, was I being unreasonable?

Didn’t even think that the clerk might have been just trying to help me out, I felt like this was a smart sales & marketing psychological trick to give up and go the way of least resistance to get me to sign up (obviously not by the clerk directly, but as part of their training on how to deal with customers).

But either way, thankfully I was polite and nice about it. I might have become too cynical about everything regarding my private info in the last few years.

Sadly enough that several stores in this country started doing the same until enough privacy aware people noticed and made a fuss about it.

Yeah at no point was I mad at the clerk and didn’t show it at all that I was boiling inside, because its just their job and they have no say in it.

Haven’t tried to say I don’t have a number or come up with a fake number, but read this in the thread earlier and will probably give it a try next time!

When I was younger and lived at home we had “family accounts”. When I went to a store I picked up the “family card” and used that. So similar experience!