Life of a Sysadmin

The occassional trials and tribulations of a jack of all tr ades sysadmin in a startup in Silicon Valley

October 2008

Let's touch base, or Harassment

I have spoken with many salespeople in the past week. In the past week, I have spoken with over a dozen salespeople (I sought pricing on business cellphone plans and a new photocopier). I have heard the phrase "I just wanted to touch base" many times. I have grown to have a great dislike of that phrase.

I do believe that every time I have heard "I just wanted to touch base" in the last seven days, it was prefaced by an interrupting phone call and followed by an annoying couple of minutes of a sales weasel not accepting my quite clear and simple statement of "Thank you for the quote, I am evaluating all of the options and will get back to you with questions, concerns, or with our decision." I wouldn't hold the phone call against them if I had not made it abundantly clear to each of these people that email is my preferred method of contact. Worse is that in most cases, it has taken more than a few such phone calls from each of them to get them to leave me alone.

So ignoring the sexual harassment angle of the phrase I am clearly starting to associate the phrase with annoyance.

[2008/10/02 | /marketing | permanent link]