Fools Every Day (Not Just April)

It ever perplexes me that so many of the so-called service folk (real estate agents are in this fold) need excuses to keep in touch; an excuse to call, an excuse to pop by, an excuse to bother you, the reader, with an inane newsletter (usually prepared by an outside service).

Of all excuses, the most insidious is the birthday “note” or “e-greeting” or call or whatever acknowledgement of a day many folks do not want acknowledged. Sending a card to a person with whom your connection is generally of such a disposition that you would not ordinarily know, so to speak, when they were dropped into the “ol” litter basket, seems to me invasive.

One supposes, that such birth date information comes to a person via two sources: the personal -- I know you and I know of you and yours; this is ok, and then there is the other -- rather impersonal -– I looked at your personnel (or personal) files that have the date even though the supplied date was put there for another purpose. So it is that service folk use personal information (supplied to them as a requirement for getting service [and nothing else]) as an excuse to “make contact”.

Now, I do not do this. I treat a person’s birthday as a bit of his or her own little inner sanctum, and let it rest. Sadly such is not the reciprocal for me. In my corner of the world, Real Estate agnets have their birth day emblazoned on their licenses; one’s license lives and dies (or renews) on the very date the quack gave “ya” the slap on the hidden cheeks in the maternity ward way back when.

I have on this April Fools Day, received a card from a mutual fund (read used money) salesman (who got a token $57,000 from me last July and has parlayed into $33,000 [but I got the card!]), an e-greeting from my office (that I will not open), a personal note from an attorney (do I need a will?) and a host of other sharks.

I have decided to give them all a nice reciprocal gift. The e-greeting was sent back with an April Fool worm; the fund salesman will see my account transferred to Fidelity, and the lawyer, well he’s already a joke.

I DO NOT need excuses to make contact people. As a professional at what I do, my information is unique, timely, well placed, original and highly sought after. Folks want to hear what I have to say…and I don’t need to spy on them.