Hi Folks,

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I don’t want to be mean but… sales people can quite seriously perturb me. I don’t know if it is because I assume immediately that they think I am some kind of spaced out idiot, or perhaps that as Don Corleone said “nothing personal just business” i.e. they are mass sending messages using AS (Artificial Stupidity) to change the name etc. 

I am getting more and more of the following on Linkedin like this today  “Hi Goff (so much for AI.. at least it won’t be taking my job in the near future), we noticed that you are a Veeam Professional (what in the name of the Salisbury soccer team is a Veeam Professional?, is that some kind of new certification? have I overdosed on Veeam swag and now been permanently branded a VP (alas not Vice President). 

Then follows the ingenious sales pitch. “you might be interested in…...” The minute I see “you might be” there is macro in my amygdala that furiously injects the word NOT into the sentence. 

I have long since gotten used to everyone in North America being my best phoney friend (hence the familiar use of Hi Geoff, and not Mr. Burke) but now they are also imposing on my intellectual freedom and telling me what I might or might not be interested in. 

I am tempted to answer but my “Professionalism” holds me back: 

“Hi starving sales entity (i.e. I don’t know if you are a person, a bot, a script, an Elon). My last name is Burke and I come from a long list of bad mood potato famine Irish who generally are depressed and pissed off at the world, and that is on a good day. On top of this I am from the pre-cell phone generation, that was back in the days when after 5PM your boss had no chance of finding you unless you were an emergency room doctor. So despite human technological progress I am not a happy camper and am no longer interested in anything other than being lazy.”

The few times when I feel joy is when I wander onto my Linkedin page and pretend to be impressed with my profile and long list of inflated achievements (no worries about ego as this momentary hubris can be immediately tempered with a visit to my online banking).

So you can imagine the feeling I get when I see new message and think this might be that fateful.. “Dear Mr Burke we have read your profile and want to offer the position of CEO… 2 day work week, 4 Month holiday.. stock options….”

Instead. “Hi Goff.. We see that you are a Veeam Professional and thought you would thrilled at 7am on a Saturday morning to shell out a lot of money for our new super duper utterly useless product”.

NOT….