Quote of the Day: Nikolai Gogol

"It's the most righteous, which of course is not the same thing as the most profitable."


I appear to be going through my annual Russian literature craze again. I am not sure what it is about that country but it's sure produced some great writers.




Today, I got a call from somebody who told me he was "John Smith" Executive Vice President of "X Bank." I got pretty excited because that's one of my new accounts and I'd been trying to get a hold of this guy for a while. He proceeded to curse me out for calling him twice today and for calling him the wrong name on his voicemail. He said he would never do business with a company that couldn't get the basics right. I asked him what numbers I had called so I could avoid doing so in the future since my computer showed he was calling from a general company line but he hung up loudly right in my ear without telling me. So I looked up his name and called the number we had listed for him to make sure I had the right guy. He answered and said, "Do you not learn things? Stop calling." I asked him if he could tell me what name I had wrongly called him but he hung up again.

So I had no choice but to shoot him an email apologizing for getting off on the wrong foot and telling him that he may get called again unless he tells me what name I wrongly called him so I can delete that particular contact from the database. Well, very shortly, I got another call from John Smith. He said my email confused him because he didn't remember talking to me. I told him I was confused as well because he sounded nothing like the first guy.

Guess what? The first guy I talked to was not John Smith at all but an impersonator. (I'm not sure impersonating a corporate suit is a crime but it should be. It's also pretty risky in light of recent current events. He's just lucky he didn't find himself testifying before congress about his exorbitant salary.) The real John Smith turned out to be a pretty nice guy. He ended up being the wrong contact but he did give me the name of the right person to contact about my solution so I guess all's well that ends well.