Today's insight (#1): some people just should not be working as phone solicitors. We must have gotten on some kind of list or something cos me and Mike each had about 3 or 4 cold-calls from people trying to sell us shit at work today. The best was this guy who called up and asked for the person in charge of ordering computer supplies. He seemed completely confused by my answer that, since we were a small office, there really was no one directly responsible for that area. He was sort of mumbling, almost like he was talking to himself and then he went on to identify himself as Jerry Johnson. Except there was a hugely audible pause before he said the name. A pause which clearly meant "pause while I stop to think of fake name to use here." HY-larious!! It was all I could do to cut off his spiel (something about buying used printer cartridges) and hang up before busting out laughing. Sure it's a cheap laugh. But any sort of entertainment value is a welcome bonus to the working day. And the punchline is that the same guy called back an hour or so later and I got the phone again. I recognized his voice as soon as he started up the script about wanting to talk to the person in charge of ordering computer supplies. That call came at a point when I was much busier and less receptive to phone solicitors on crack. I believe I ended the transaction by informing the gentlemen caller that he'd rung us up already today and I hadn't wanted to talk to him them and I didn't now either.
today's insight (#2): Starlite haters, bite me...
Starlite haters can bite me, too. Hell, shoot 'em all, that's what I say!
(Note to the humor-impaired, the preceding sentence was what we smart-asses call a joke.)
I'm trying to reproduce the cold call I got the other day. It was from someone trying to sell a product for managing Unix systems, only she seemed not to be aware that an enterprise might have more than one Unix system or that they could be connected in some way. She kept going back to her list which said that we had "a" Unix system and asking to speak to the person in charge of "the" Unix system. I was well down the path of trying to explain to her what an operating system and a network are, when I decided that I might have a better day picking some other insoluble problem to work on, say world peace, and hung up on her.