Subject: Personal & Important 
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 13:43:23 -0400 (EDT) 


So I'm at my desk. The receptionist comes up to me with an envelope
marked "Alex Chaffee - Personal & Important". She says "And the woman
who left it is still waiting in the lobby..." I thank her and
suspiciously open the letter.



June 25, 1996

Dear Mr. Chaffee,

I am in your lobby at this time and would like very much to see you.

If you'll give me about 7 or 8 minuets, [sic] I would like to show you
a product that can aid you in planning and managing your web sites as
well as meeting your deadlines _within_ budget. The US Department of
State, the US Airforce, DEC and Unisys are just a few of the companies
that are currently taking advantage of this oppoptunity.

Thank you Mr. Chaffee for your willingness to meet me.

Enthusiastically,

[Name withheld]



My first reaction is to get angry. It's live junk mail! I consider
just letting her wait forever, but I figure two wrongs don't make a
right, so I go to the lobby, and before she can say a word, I say, "I
don't have time for a sales call -- could you just give me your
literature?" I manage to more or less politely brush her off, and I
walk away with a glossy marketing kit (for a product in which I have
absolutely no interest -- good use of buzzwords though) and an amusing
story.

Has this kind of thing happened to anyone else? I'm a little worried;
if this becomes common, then my friends will be regarded suspiciously
when they drop by, and the already thankless and stressful job of
receptionist will become that much more difficult...

- Alex

P.S. The product literature uses the following buzzwords:
client/server methodology, user interface, business rules,
architecture-driven approach, embedded expert system, systems
integration, rapid application delivery (RAD), data warehouse
solutions for the enterprise, neural net (actually she said this, but
the literature says it's a rule-based expert system...), virtual
methodology, template-driven.


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Copyright © 1996 Alexander D. Chaffee (alex@stinky.com). All rights reserved. 
See more at http://www.stinky.com/almanac/