Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

“Not so polite” time saving tips — that work.

Hot Points – A blog by Go Daddy founder and president Bob Parsons
I insist that if someone is calling me and I don’t know them, that they immediately get to the point with what they want.

I love this post by Bob Parsons. And I love the picture of Bob on his web site. He looks like such a hard ass. And I’m very fond of Go Daddy and have several domains registered and hosted with them.

Bob is absolutely right that you do not owe strangers any of your time. You simply don’t. In some ways, Bob’s more polite to these strangers than I am. He, at least, warns them that they have 30 seconds to get to the point. What I sometimes do when a stranger launches into a long spiel about isn’t it a lovely day today and a happy holiday season to you and yours and let me explain this fabulous opportunity to you… is I just set the telephone down on the kitchen countertop and walk away. Who knows how long the idiot on the other end of the line will keep yapping before he realizes there’s no one there? My signal that it’s time to hang up the phone is when I hear that loud beeping “no connection” sound.

When you telephone my home, you are entering my personal space. If I haven’t invited you into my space, I don’t have any obligation to talk to you. Period. I should just hang up on you but, I have to admit, I take a certain sadistic glee in letting you waste your time talking to nobody.

As everyone who knows me well already realizes, I pretty much hate the telephone anyway. And I loathe voicemail. It’s disturbing, the number of people who don’t know how to leave a decent voicemail message. Here’s how to leave voicemail, fools!

1. Speak VERY clearly.
2. State your full name at the beginning and the end of the message and, if the person you’re calling isn’t a personal friend or relative, SPELL your last name.
3. Give your telephone number slowly and very clearly. TWICE.

Northing irks me quite like having to listen to a message 2 or 3 times in order to decode who in the hell is calling, what their telephone number is, and what the hell they want. Oh, and like Bob Parsons, if you’re a stranger calling with some message to the effect of “I’m about to make an important decision and I need your imput before I can do so!”, forget it. You’re not hearing from me, fool. You think I don’t recognize a lame-ass sales scam when I hear it?

If you want to communicate with me, the best way to go is email. But get to the point, okay?