Getting My Blood Boiling

A high school acquaintance of mine recently contacted me insisting on meeting up with me. Honestly, I don't know him with enough familiarity so I naturally have some hesitation on his request.

I found out from some of my friends that he's been asking almost everyone for money, even small amounts will do. Most (if not all) of them declined, citing financial obligations and their personal fiscal statuses. And none of them were able to elicit information from him on the purpose of his money-borrowing spree.

Anyway, when he contacted me last Friday night via SMS, I asked him blatantly what's the money for. I told him to lay out his cards and that there's no sense in giving me vague stories.

And the only thing he told me is that he needed the money to (1) avoid a court hearing and (2) finance his niece's education. He was hoping to meet up with me to help him out and discuss a payment scheme, granting that I'll agree to it.

That got me thinking and my blood boiling.

Charity is a virtue, but helping out someone on his fiscal problems due to his personal/business activities does not merit charity. I believe in the saying that 'you reap what you sow'. I deduced that he must have involved himself in some 'get-rich-quick' scheme (which I very much disapprove of) like those multi-level marketing scams.

But his is a business proposition. Too bad that I have an occassional business frame-of-mind.

If he's resorted to borrowing from friends (and to some people that he doesn't know well), then clearly his credit is already bad that formal credit institutions are not keen on providing him credit.

The fact that he's soon to be undergoing litigation also points out that his fiscal problems have been around for quite some time. And I presume that it must involve a fairly large amount in order for it to be presented for litigation. Under these circumstances, a gentleman's agreement will not suffice. Business controls will need to be set-up and observed.

How much does he need?
How much does he owe?
How much does he regularly earn?
How much does he regularly spends?
What payment scheme do you propose?
Will you agree to surrendering all your financial controls to another person so they can monitor and control your financial activity?
Will you agree to meeting with your creditors once every two months to update them on your financial status and capability?
...
..
.
and so on and so forth.

And using his niece as an excuse is very lame.

He'll need to pass through a needle's eye before I lend him any amount.

Again, the reason for all these scrutiny on my part is that he's just an acquaintance.

-----------------------------

If there's one thing I hate, it's those pesky telemarketers who are very insistent despite me politely declining to whatever promo or product they are pushing. I understand that everyone has to make a decent and honorable living, but everyone has to have some sort of respect to whomever they're dealing with.

So after burning out my limited patience nowadays, I thought I'd give them a lesson.

Last week for five straight days I've been receiving calls at my mobile phone AND my office phone AND my residential phone from telemarketers (let's see, their names are Nicole, Samantha, Rachelle, Grace and Angie so far). Suppossedly I won a 2-night-3-day stay at any of the Days Hotel. All I needed to do was just go to a nearby Days Hotel and attend a product presentation for 90 minutes. No financial obligations for the prize, they added.

I politely declined, saying that I'm not interested and that my schedule has been very busy with work recently. They'll probe and probe, and I'll say that I'm not really interested. Finally, I'll manage to say 'Goodbye and thanks'. I thought that was the end of it.

But nope, another telemarketer would ring my mobile a couple of hours later and we'll go through the same routine again.

And then another one would call my office phone and repeat the process.

And they repeated everything the following day.

By Friday, I was already pissed off that I decided to spend my lunch break by surprising them. I trooped over to Days Hotel in Batangas. Boy, I've got everything ready. I was actually pumped up in delivering an ultimatum to them.

"Hi Sir, what I may do for you?"

"My name is Stephen Cruz. I'm here for the product presentation that your telemarketers have informed me about."

"Right this way, sir."

I was directed to a function room full of people, tables arranged in such a way that there's one agent for each prospective customer. Some tables were already midway the presentations.

"Hi Sir. I'm Samantha and I'll be orienting you on our product offer. blah blah blah blah.... Before we begin, is there something you'd like to ask?"

Bingo. That's the opening that I was waiting for.

"Now that you mentioned it," I stood up and said in a loud voice, "I have a brief announcement to make."

"The only reason why I came here is that for the last 4 days, I've been spending nearly an hour every day on the phone talking with one of your telemarketers. I have politely indicated that I am not interested in your product or service that you're offering. Despite that, they'll still call the following day and we'll go through the same routine again."

"Seeing that your telemarketers seem not to understand the meaning of the word 'NO', I am here in person to say that I am clearly not interested in your product or service. Am I clear?"

No reaction from Samantha. Her mouth was hanging a bit.

"Can I talk to the manager?"

Manager whatsisname raised his hand in acknowledgment.

"Sir, as manager, I suppose that you're capable of understanding what I mentioned earlier."

"I understand, sir."

"Thank you. And if any of your telemarketers call me again, I will personally talk with the hotel's manager and express my dissatisfaction with the operations that you're conducting. Shame on them for partnering with your group which currently rates zero in terms of customer service. I hope there are no questions for I have no intentions of entertaining them."

Saying that, I walked out. Smiling.

And so far, I haven't received any phone call from them.