Much like many posters here, I have some preset responses that I send to recruiters. In particular, it’s a “I’m not looking right now, but I’ll save your info and let you know if my situation changes!”. This worked really well when my startup fell apart, and I was able to “scramble the jets” and get interviews set up within a week at a ton of companies. I think that the author confused “polite” with “passive aggressive” (or maybe it’s a cultural difference between my country and Germany).

I always try to leave recruiters with a positive impression, so as to not burn future bridges.

...except Herman Search. Every single recruiter has approached me flashing large salary numbers for boring, stressful sounding financial tech jobs, and being pushy/downright aggressive when I don’t show interest. I’ve asked every recruiter to put me on their do not contact list, but still, every couple of months, I get another generic male white frat bro recruiter, new to the company, reaching out again with the exact same tact. It toes the line between unprofessional and confrontational. With all due respect, which is none, fuck Herman Search.