How Not to Do Business

Surreal experiences are not foreign to me of a Friday morning. After all, I am a public school teacher, and for some reason Fridays are the most difficult day of the week.

But I digress. I digress far and wide, because this is SUMMER, and I should not be talking about school.

I'm back.

Okay, here's the scenario: Yesterday I got a phone call about my new soap business, "Olde Crone's Bewitching Bath Soap." The person left a message specifically asking for my business. This intrigued me, because I have not been advertising as such, so I was thinking this person was referred by my group of friends who have purchased my soap.

Silly, silly me.

You see, last week I went downtown and procured my state and local business licenses. I now have to collect sales tax on my purchases, etc. etc. No big deal. I should have seen the influx of phone calls coming.

The phone call mentioned above was from a woman who works for a merchant credit processing company. She was soliciting me to set up a merchant account, so that I could receive credit cards as payment for my business. While I feel this is a good idea, I'm not really ready to sit down and pursue it, yet. However, the woman yesterday was quite pleasant and seemed to know her business very well. Unfortunately, I was on the road at the time, so I asked her to email me about a potential meeting with her next week. I have yet to receive that email, but that's no big deal; I bet she'll call me back.

Okay, fast-forward to this morning. My phone rings yet again, saying, "Private Number," on the display. At that point, I figured it was another credit company, and I was right.

*deep breath* Now, the details I am about to impart to you are a bit shocking, so brace yourselves. Refer to the title of this entry to assist the bracing:

The woman began with her spiel, and immediately I asked her, "Can you send me the details in an email, so I can read it at my leisure?"

She responded, "Oh, well, I don't know how to use the email, so I prefer to talk to you about it over the phone."



At which point, I blinked. Twice. I then shook my head a little bit to clear it, and responded, professionally and calmly, "Well, if you don't know how to use email, then I don't think I want to do business with your company." I thought this was fair; the year is 2005, after all, and I should be able to do business via email, if that is my preference, ESPECIALLY since she was soliciting me.

After I made this statement, she said, "Oh." AND THEN SHE HUNG UP ON ME AS I WAS SPEAKING.




*closes eyes, shakes head again*




Which proves that my instincts were correct about that business.


p.s. She called back immediately afterward. I declined the call to send it to voice mail. She didn't leave a message. I presume she was going to give me some bullshit about how we got "disconnected." *snort!* Yeah, right.