Here's a suggestion, based on some rather old experience. A couple of generations ago, I worked at a "terminal farm" in the same room as several minicomputers. The noise level was so high that we were issued ear protectors - over-the-ear headphones with no sound reproduction hardware. If you're working in a noisy environment, get a pair of headphones that do a good job of blocking external noise. This has several benefits: 1. It gives you a quiet environment 2. You can play your favorite music without adding to the ambient noise around you 3. It demonstrates to others (management) that the environment is too noisy - maybe the situation will improve for everyone!

I have experienced most of the idiocies you describe, and more (although I'm a bit less upset by requests to recommend other candidates when the message offers a USD$500 "commission"). Let's add a couple more: I have retired(I still take small projects), so I have removed my resume from all the job sites. I still get E-mails stating the recruiter found my resume on Monster, or Career Builder, or ... In other words, yet another form letter. Why did I retire? I just got too tired of the idiocy of the recruiting process. The IT recruiting industry seems to have implemented a common "unsubscribe" mechanism (through something called "jobseekers"). However, the unsubscribe applies to the recruiter, not the company. WTF? Finally, like you, I've got quite a few years of experience (try forty-four). In the U.S., it's illegal to discriminate on the basis of age. So I became accustomed to being rejected for "not being energetic enough." How energetic do you need to be to sit in a cubicle and type on a keyboard? Given that experienced programmers are more productive, and make far fewer bad design decisions, they are a better choice, even economically. And, of course, if you (the employer) need to save money (in a short-term calculation that amounts to cutting your throat to satisfy your shareholders while losing (see, I spelled that right ;<) your customers), you can always lay me off, or out-source my job to China (where an entire team of programmers were unable to even understand the code I provided). Sigh.