It must be Horny Sales Douche mating season or something. Do you suppose if I write “BUY NOW” in loud colors on a bottle of saline and throw it out the window, they will leave me alone for a while?
*ring ring*
Me: (my name and company’s name)
Peddler: “Hi my name’s so and so with such and such, can I just confirm your information…”
Me: “Sur– wait, who is this? Is this about magazines?”
Peddler: “We’re a global leader in complimentary technical publi–”
Me: “No thanks, we already get too many of those things.”
Peddler: “It’s free you know. It’s full of useful information!” (or something to that effect)
Me: “I know. Not interested though.”
Peddler: “N-wait, you’re turning down a completely free subscription?”
Me: “Yeah. Hmm..tellya what, I’ll make you a deal. We have this big stack of unread magazines piling up on a table in my office. For every one of them you remove, you can send us one of yours…”
Peddler: “Okay, thannks, have a nice day *click*”
Again Jeff and I are taking turns fending off peddlers of stupid waste-of-trees free (advertising-funded) trade rags, and more importantly, contract design/manufacturing and consulting services. “No we’re not interested in your contract R&D service.” “Why not?” “Duh, we are a contract R&D company. You are our competitor.” “No we’re not interested in your consultancy services.” “Well why not?” “Google is my software consultant.”
So the phone rings, and it’s this distributor (name is familiar as we’ve done business with a similarly-named, but different, company in the past) calling to “make sure his records are up to date”. Sure, OK I says.
So he’s reading off my position, etc., and then spelling back my name to verify: “G..I..B..” (Aha! Now I know where you bought my name*. Fucking RTECC…) This is nobody we know, it’s a salesdouche.
So, salesdouche asks for my email address, I tell him it’s classified I prefer not to give out that information, and he gets all defensive… “I’m not going to spam you!” I start getting off onto a mini-rant– “Well, different people have different definitions of spam, and it so happens the definition of spam used by the last 30 people who bought my name from RTECC and spammed me differs from mine.”–but my officemate walked in just then and I felt the need to sound more professional. Anyway, it turns out we do NOT have an existing account with this company; this guy just wanted to call up out of the blue and let us know he sells crap… ask if I have any immediate need for some switches & relays, or expect that I soon will** for any upcoming project, because man, if I ever do need any switches & relays, he’s my guy.
* my last name has two common spellings. On encountering a situation which screams, “I Will Sell Your Name and Crapflood You with Junk”, I intentionally give the other one. That way, whenever I get mail or phonecalls addressed to (wrong one), I know immediately that the caller is intent on wasting my time.
**unfortunately, the parts I specify and purchase are driven by the application’s requirements, not what some horny sales rep calls me up trying to unload that week.
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