Like I Care!

It goes like this: someone is trying to sell me something (or make money out of me, even in an indirect way) but finds out that, on reflection, I have decided not to take them up on their allegedly fabulous offer. My usual way of dealing with sales people is to ignore their pitch as much as possible, and mostly to disbelieve anything they say that is not a matter of public record, or cannot be confirmed by a panel of independent experts.

Ignoring their pitch includes shunning their insistence on talking to me whenever they can, phoning me up all the goddamn time etc. I have a mobile phone, but - and this is something that some people really don't get - it's for my benefit, not theirs. So if they know I have a mobile phone, they phone it all the goddamn time, and can't understand why I don't drop everything and answer it whenever they call. My mobile phone is not a red-painted bat-phone that cannot be ignored.

The Nokia BAT-1

That's not the really annoying part.

The really annoying part is when I've denied them the chance to do their pitch at me, and then rejected their offer, and they say how disappointed they are, and how they wish they'd "had the chance to talk to me about it properly", and how the phone is the only way they can effectively communicate with me, and that they are "finding it really frustrating not being able to contact me."

By this time, I will usually have suggested (many times) email or leaving a message as an effective and non-intrusive way to impart information to me, but they don't like this.

I presume it's because they imagine they are such a fantastically good salesperson that if they could only talk to me, they could work their inter-personal magic on me and I will change my mind in no time. But they can't. So they get upset and tell me they are 'sad' or 'disappointed' about this. And basically, that I'm not giving them a fair chance, or wasted their time, or I've let them down, or possibly that, in a funny way, I've let customers down everywhere.

So, in light of that, allow me to let every such person know the following information, which, although it's not in the form of a telephone conversation, nevertheless includes all the information they need to know:

I. Really. Don't. Care.

Thanks for listening.

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