Barbarians At The Door
The church bell chimed ’til it rang twenty-nine times
for each second it took for her herald.
The leaflet she left I did throw on the ground
not a green way to grub for my money.
—
I believe that God has a plan for all of us.
I believe that plan involves me getting my own planet.
And I believe; that the current President of The Church, Thomas Monson, speaks directly to God.
I am A Mormon,
And, dang it! a Mormon just believes!
—
Q. Oh, where can I go to learn about God, religion, being humble and serving the poor? (Remember: When claiming he out-gave Barack Obama, Mitt Romney referred to giving money to his church as “charitable donations.”)
A. Take this road two miles, hang a left at the oak tree, and look for the most opulent building in town. You can’t miss it. It’s the one that makes the Tower of Babel seem like child’s play. We call it a Temple. Don’t ask us how it was funded, though. Our financial records are more private than your phone calls.
—
This weekend, Thomas Monson, the 16th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, had a message for his faithful flock of 15 million worldwide via the LDS General Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. We’ve built 142 temples, he proudly said, the most recent one in Gilbert, Arizona, and there will be a modest 172 of them by the time all current construction projects are completed.
Another Mormon leader had a slightly different message for the record number of nearly 85,000 Mormon missionaries crawling around the surface of this planet. Jeffrey Holland, an official member of a select group known as the Quorum Of Twelve, called on missionaries to “defend” their faith.
Holland pointed out that missionaries should stay strong and defend their faith despite the inevitable personal abuse they will encounter. (Source: FOX News.)
Since I couldn’t make the conference this year, I guess you could call this an open letter of sorts containing an opposing point of view from the Abyss. Maybe my invitation got lost in the mail?
Tom’s Law #42
You never have to defend your religion to me if you don’t stick it in my face in the first place. In other words, please don’t put me on the receiving end of your missionary position.Source: Tom’s Infinite Book of Infinite Laws
Audacity of Gumption
I believe that people have the right and freedom to believe what they want. I believe that’s a basic human right.
When I meet someone, who knows what they might believe? In all likelihood they believe in God. (In this country I’d say about a 70 to 80 percent chance.) There’s at least a fifty fifty shot their political party affiliation is different than my own. There’s a high probability they believe in at least one idea that I’d consider wonky. (Bigfoot? Probed by aliens? Michele Bachmann is human? Sarah Palin is a decent hunter because she uses a helicopter?) If you think of the political spectrum as a grid, the odds drop even lower, perhaps 1/16th, that we are in the same general neighborhood.
I don’t worry about any of that stuff. I base my opinion of a person on things like how they act, what they say, if there are nice, sound pleasant and reasonable, rub me the right way, etc.
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Busy Does a Bossy Good
The boss is a very, very busy man. We know this because he takes hours out of his day to tell us all about it.
Tom,
WIDGET-424242 Premium has the wrong color listed.
It should be “Brown”
Please correct both color attributes and the name.
thanks,
Marquis
Note the subtle capitalization and punctuation errors. Like a boss!
I should be used to this by now. But still I sat there, stunned, staring at his email on my screen. He could have sent a shorter email. “Widget 424242 wrong color. Thanks.” But he didn’t.
I thought about hitting “reply” and asking a simple question: “Will there ever come a day when you don’t feel the need to include that extraneous sentence at the end?” I heard it can be beneficial to dream. Well, I have my dreams, too.
He went ahead and listed the correct color, even though I could have figured that out on my own. Maybe we can give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was just trying to be helpful. He saved me the bother of having to look it up in the catalog.
But WTF is up with that next sentence? He just told me the color was “wrong.” I know what that means. It has to be fixed. If I really strained my brain cells enough I might even be able to extrapolate, like an Eistein smartypants, what should happen next. We have to correct the wrong information on the website! Am I right, am I right, Alex Trebec? What do I win?
Luckily, though, the boss is ever vigilant and at the ready to provide more than enough information. Apparently he thinks we’re so damn stupid we won’t know to wipe our own asses unless he’s there to point out the obvious. “And use toilet paper next time!” That might also explain why he walks into occupied bathrooms without the courtesy of knocking first. It’s because he’s so damn smarter than us idiots. No doubt that’s why he hired us.
“You going to send that letter in the mail? You’ll have to put on a postage stamp. The post office won’t deliver it without one.” Are you fucking shitting me? (And, for the record, I’m not making this up. This is an actual verbatim from the boss to me.)
I can’t help but wonder. What if the boss was in charge of other stuff? What would that look like?
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It’s Raining Hens
As an amateur doucheologist I study communication and interaction phenomena. My special area of research is conversation inhibitors like interrupting and the inability to listen. I have a special penchant for that sort of thing and I dare say I’m an expert at study of same. Throw in some basic human pushiness for good measure and you’ve got yourself a real humdinger trifecta!
The occasion? A baby shower for my wife’s boss. I’m going to call her Marjoram. She been “trying” for five years and this is her first so this is a pretty big deal, or so I’m told.
Somewhere it is written that a social function known as a “baby shower” must be held to commemorate the event. So let the games begin!
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Always Be Opposing
Hi there! I'll be your douchbag for this call!
ABC – Always Be Closing
Once I was hired for a job at a tech company. I’m a tech kind of guy. Tech is what I love to do for a living. I was interviewed and screened. Throughout the process I stressed that I didn’t want a sales position. I was told repeatedly the position was not sales. I was taken to meet the CEO. He presented the profit sharing plans and other fantastically creative benefits, stressing that these were “in the works” and something they “hoped” to offer “down the road.” Oh, and yeah, the position I was being hired for wasn’t sales. I had the CEO’s personal assurance on that.
I was subsequently hired and my first day was a Wednesday. I spent the entire day sitting in a chair by a salesman’s desk listening to him sell things on the phone. I shit you not. There was no orientation, no H.R. visit. Just go sit in a friggin’ chair.
I was told that on Monday I’d finally start training for my real job. They didn’t have what you’d call an official “training program.” So I sat there all day, bored out of my fucking skull, listening to this guy talk on the phone. It was so bad I wanted to reenact the final scene from The Deer Hunter. In his spare time, though, the salesman would actually interact with me and teach me vital “tech” things like: ABC – Always Be Closing.
Thursday and Friday my days were spent doing the exact same thing. Sitting and listening to this guy talk on the phone. Then, on Friday afternoon, they said my training would be postponed at least one full week. I was scheduled for, you guessed it, one more full week of sitting in a chair listening to a salesman talk on the phone.
I politely told them where they could stick their job and that I would not be back.
And that’s the cheerful story about how I learned all about ABC – Always Be Closing. 🙂
How many salespersons out there forget this very basic rule? And what does it mean to be “closing?”
I’m going to hazard a guess and suggest that “closing” doesn’t include things like harassment, rudeness, being pushy, not listening, automated phone calls, making the person who answers the phone wait for you to pick up the line, etc. You know, the various and assorted aspects of douchebaggery.
Keep in mind that this post is about people trying to SELL stuff to me. Not the other way around.
Do not get my dander up or NO SALE
Lesson One: Don’t call my cell phone. Ever. This is the ultimate in rudeness. Fortunately for me, my cell phone days are numbered. I shot my TV and next I’m shooting my cell. Then I’m going to paint my face and run through the rain forest nearby screaming FREEDOM!!!
Lesson Two: Don’t call my cell phone. Ever. I’m already on the do not call list, so why the fuck are you even calling me? If you try to pull that loophole shit on me that the weak ass “do not call” act gives you permission, like I walked by your store within the last 18 months, you will not find me very receptive to the “let’s use a loophole to try to make a sale” approach. In fact, I’ll be wishing you a pleasant journey to a very warm place for attempting such a hideous thing.
Lesson Three: Don’t call my cell phone. Evar. Personally if I don’t recognize the number you can kiss my grits. I’ll never pick up. You’re just wasting my time (and yours). And I ignore all calls that come in without caller ID. In fact, I pound the reject key as fast as I possibly can to prevent you from reaching my voice mail, too, so do not try to be sneaky.
Lesson Four: Don’t harass your existing customers. I may already have the misfortune and retardation required to be doing business with you. That does not give you permission to call me daily and ask me to “upgrade” to your fucking bundle. THIS MEANS YOU, CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS!!! Being your customer (a temporary condition that will be remedied soon) is not an automatic invitation to be your phone bitch, yo.
Lesson Five: Don’t call me at work, dumb ass. This is not the time to listen to your spiel about how you want to rip me off.
Lesson Six: Learn some basic manners. Seriously. Do you really think that being rude and pushy is going to close the sale? I cannot stress this enough. Acting like a rude impatient ass is NEVER going to encourage me to give you my money. I don’t care if you have Jessica Alba herself in a box. I won’t buy from you.
It cracks me up that I actually know more about landing a sale than 90% of the idiot assholes who call me on the phone. And that concludes our little course on “salesperson things not to do” for today.
Shouts from the Abyss 
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