[reportgunner]

By an insincere "how are you" they are extracting information on your current mood to engineer a proper communication protocol that is required to extract as much value for their personal objective as possible. I'm not disagreeing with you, just explaining their motivations to do it.

[jonathanlydall]

While it may be an intentional strategy for cold calling spammers, I doubt it because >99% of calls I receive do this, even from companies who I want to be calling me back, I think it's mostly a (pretty bad) cultural norm.

Also, for me it seems like a terrible strategy as I generally feel like responding to the greeting with: "Well, actually quite annoyed at this moment due to the appallingly poor way you've just started this call."