Junk Faxes That Bite Back

I get junk faxes at least once a day. The machine buzzes and beeps and churns out page after page of "Discount Cruise Prices" and "Sell Your Ancient Cell Phones" and "Exciting New Small Business Finance!" (That one just spewed out of the old machine as I was typing.) It's gotten a lot better since I put the fax number on the donotcall.gov list, but I haven't been able to eliminate everything.

So last week when a product specification sheet came through addressed to "Kelly" and did not mention a related project or give specific directions as to who I should direct the information, I tossed it in to the recycling bin.

Fast forward to today and some guy calls and asks for "Kelly" to which I tell him that there is no one in our office by that name. Irritably he says, "Well, I don't know why they would tell me that!" I kind of stared at the phone, surprised by how upset he seemed to be. "Well, is there an office manager that I can talk to?"

"Well, yeah. That's me. Somebody probably got confused, because my name is Shelli."

Oh. He was placated for just a minute and went on and on about how great his product is. As if I know anything about it.... as if I have any say as to whether or not his product gets used.

"I sent you a fax..." Oh! It was that guy. The guy who had the presumption to send me a fax and think that I cared about his product enough to look and read through the specifications of it and what it does.

I was honest with him. I am not the person he needs to talk to. The person he does need to talk to is not here today. "Can you send me some information that I can pass on to Kevin?"

Oops. I should have known that he would be all riled up about the fact that he had sent me information in that fax. "The information isn't going to be any different than that fax," he snipped at me.

"Well," I said. "To be honest, that fax headed straight to the recycle bin when I received it."

"WHY would you do that?!" He growled, in not so many words.

"First, the fax was addressed to 'Kelly'," I reminded him. "Second, it didn't reference a project, so I couldn't send it to a project manager. I didn't know what to do with it. So I put it into the recycle bucket." Not only that, but he didn't include any other contact information other than the return fax number. So I couldn't even question him as to what it was supposed to be.

The guy's attitude put me on the defensive and really irritated me. I had asked him if he would email me the information he wanted me to pass on to Kevin, and he later asked me "which method I preferred to get that information." BY EMAIL! I wanted to shout at him, but instead I just gave him my email address and told him not to fax me anymore.

And then when I hung up, I called him a nasty name. Because really, the little turd deserved it.