The piles of paper on my desk are getting larger by the minute. I can't seem to keep up. My email program chimes every few seconds, announcing another bunch of emails. The phone rings constantly, as I keep getting calls from people trying to sell me something, or to extract from me money for some cause. In other words, it's business as usual.
Here's the problem, though: The product or service being promoted is always better than any other. The cause is always more noble, or more worthy of my support, than any other. A caller never questions whether or not I can spare the time to listen to a sales pitch. Salespeople, or canvassers or fund-raisers risk alienating the very people they need to make a sale, or from whom to collect a donation. They are too pushy or too familiar, too inconsiderate of someone else's time. The inevitable 'no,' in response to their pitch, is a word that they seem not to understand.
Maybe I'm just a tad more impatient than I usually am. For the moment, I don't need any more widgets or doodads or thingamajigs, or anything else. Instead, a quiet moment would be nice. After all, I would really like to catch up on my blog-reading.
Maybe tomorrow.
WOW! I step out for a little while, and "Da Sieg" goes post-happy *grin*!
ReplyDeleteGood to see you're still there...One of my favorite bloggers just signed out for good.
Here in Indiana, we have something called a "Do Not Call" list you can sign on to that keeps the fast-talking con-artists away to some degree, but it's not bulletproof. There are screening devices that can be installed on business lines that will block nuissance calls, but it kinda' takes all the fun out of telling the guy "Hold on, I'll get him, setting the receiver down in the wastepaper basket, and wasting THEIR time instead of mine:)
We have lists like that here too, but calls are generally filtered by my staff before they get to me. The problem is that because I hate it when I call someone to whom I wish to speak specifically and their secretary asks 'who may I say is calling,' I don't allow my staff to do that. If someone asks to speak to me, they have to guess at whether it is someone I would wish to speak to, or whether it is just a nuisance call. Usually they get it right but some unwanted calls do make it through to me. One of life's small annoyances; no big deal when you see all the real misery that surrounds us.
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