Um…

A man saw our ad in a magazine, got onto our commercial web site, had the wherewithal to find and click on “send us mail” at our web site, and then wrote the following;

“I saw your Ad in a recent issue of Shotgun News Mag. Please…let me know where I can purchase your products.”

Avoiding the urge to launch into scathing, blistering sarcasm requires patience and understanding. I’ve not always been patient or understanding. In fact I’ve actually taken pride in NOT being patient or understanding, if that makes any sense, and have often taken pride in my ability to express sarcasm in the most eloquent, mean ways with maximum insult, puffing myself up at someone else’s expense. The first step is recognizing the urge for what it is, and then realizing that my job is customer service, that I’ve been contacted by a perspective customer, which is the only reason why I am here. I’ve often said that we should be heartened by the fact that we are inspiring people to get onto the internet for their very first time (and yet even in that statement there is a twinge of sarcasm, no?).

Hello. My name is Lyle and I am a sarcasmoholic…

One day at a time.

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6 thoughts on “Um…

  1. I think there are spammers around who write that sort of email to every mailing list they can find. I keep seeing messages just like that on lists like the GCC developers’ list — an email list of people working on an open source C compiler. It may be simple idiocy, or it may be an attempt to harvest “live” addresses for more spam.

    • That is a good point, though in this case there is enough information (I didn’t copy the whole message) including personal information, that I believe it is a genuine request. We get phone calls of the same nature also; “Hey I was on your web site…Do you guys sell directly to the public?”

      • Maybe he wants to look at the products in real life before he buys? Maybe he wants to save on shipping? I can think of a lot of reasons a person might want to find something at a retail outlet (versus mail order).

    • I’ve actually done my best to give sarcasm up entirely for that reason. No matter how over the top I tried to be someone would assume I was serious because they had encountered people who had honestly, earnestly put forth the same proposition I had used to sound ridiculous.

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