Monthly Archives: November 2017

On a personal note – Telemarketers.

Some things I just don’t understand.

Every day, I get anywhere up to a dozen calls on my cell phone, supposedly from numbers in
my area code (but not in my contacts list), each of them a recorded message inviting me to
take action on either student loan or credit card debt forgiveness.

There are only two unique calls. The numbers they come from differ – they’re being spoofed from
overseas – but it’s one of the same two messages every time. And they always leave a voice mail for me –
because the robo-calls can’t identify the fact that there’s not a real person who answered.

If I answer the call, and ask o be put on the Do Not Call list, I get hung up on – immediately.
If I try to return the call at a later time, it invariably turns out that the number is not in service.

The stupid here is this – I can not for the life of me figure out what the business model here is.

The idea, obviously, is to get me to sign up for some sort of service, which will cost me money and likely not deliver any tangible results. I understand that.

But if I’ve answered the phone, declined the service, and asked not to be called again, what’s the benefit in re-calling?

If I’ve failed to sign up for the service after the 100th, 200th, and 500th call, what is the point in placing the 101st, 201st, 501st, and 1000th calls?

Every chance I get (i.e., when I’m bored or particularly annoyed), I WILL answer these calls, and I will press “4” or whatever digit gets me to a live operator, and do what I can to waste as much of their time as possible. But I’ve found that the more I do that, the more frequent the robo-calls become.

And again, what’s the logic behind THAT? I’ve just answered your call – why would you then go and call me back with the same offer at a higher frequency?

It seems pretty stupid to me. But I’ve yet to figure out a way to stamp this particular stupidity out …

Why a Protocol Officer is a good idea …

Trump with Navajo Code Talkers

 

Let’s say you’re the President of the United States.  And let’s say that you’re hosting an event at the White House to honor some Word War II vets who happen to be Native American,  What would you think the focus of such an event should be?

  1. Honoring the aforementioned vets for their service
  2. Using the event to take pot shots (complete with ethnic slurring) at a political opponent who is in no way connected to the event being held, or
  3. Causing discomfort to the honorees by holding the event in a location prominently featuring the portrait of a man who was responsible for much suffering and death amongst Native Americans during his Presidency.

If you’re most people, you’d go with #1.  But President Trump is not most people.  Any honoring that got done at the event was overshadowed by #s 2 and 3.

We can be generous and write off #3 – holding the event in front of a portrait of Andrew Jackson, he of Trail of Tears fame and a true bigot when it came to native Americans – as cluelessness rather than malice.  The problem is, professional administrations have protocol offices to look out for these kinds of things.  Apparently, Mr. Trump doesn’t  feel the need to avail himself of a competent protocol officer..

That’s just stupid.  You end up with a gaffe that could have been easily avoided, but wasn’t – because you couldn’t be bothered to take basic steps to prevent it.

The pot-shots are another story entirely.  Referring to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (who claimed a bit of Cherokee in her ancestry) as Pocahontas (a Powhatan) while celebrating the Navajo Code Talkers of WWII was simply an exercise in pettiness.  Again, this is where a protocol officer could have helped – assuming they could have kept the President on-script (a questionable assumption at best).  The use of “Pocahontas” was intended as a derogatory term  – who in their right mind thinks that is appropriate when honoring Native Americans?  More importantly, the whole affair had the effect of taking the focus off of the veterans being honored, and turning it on to Mr. Trump.

Which is a waste, because those gentlemen deserve to be honored.

Get a good Protocol Officer, Mr. Trump – and let them do their job.  It’ll help turn down the stupid coming out of your White House.  A little.  I hope.