No, you may not
Posted on | December 7, 2007 | 12 Comments
An old friend of mine is getting married in a couple of weeks. He’s a hypnotist but a good kind of hypnotist. Not for him the relaxing chairs and soothing whales noises, he’s got the spinning bow-tie and dangling medallion.
As he can hypnotise anything from anyone he has no need for the usual wedding gifts so he and his lovely bride to be (a trainee butcher, fantastic!) are going on a trip around the world and asked that people might make a donation to the cost of the trip by way of a present. Personally I wanted to hand him an envelope and slap his face gently like in Goodfellas but what can you do?
Anyway, I went into the place in town yesterday to make my donation. I sat down and I told the young lady what I wanted to do. She had me write a little note that would be sent to them and off she went with my money. Then she came back after about ten minutes and told me she needed to open a file.
“Ok”, I said. My note was merely signed ‘Twenty’, so she asked me for my surname.
“Major”, I said suspiciously.
“And your address?”
“Why do you need my address?”
“I don’t know, it’s just down here.”
“7, Grafton Street, Dublin 2″, I lied.
“And your mobile phone number?”
“I’m not giving you that.”
“Why not?”
“Because why would I? What do you need all this information for? I’m just here to make a cash transaction. Why can’t we just deal in cash these days without all the questions? Jesus.”
“I still need a mobile phone number.”
“O87 – 555 5555″, I said.
“That’s not real”, she said.
“Have you considered appearing on Mastermind?”, I asked.
“And can I have your email address please?”
“No, you cannot.”
Seriously, when I tell you she had a face on her like I’d told her her new born child was the ugliest, most retarded looking thing I’d ever seen it’s not a word of a lie. She really could not understand why I would be reluctant to provide them with all my personal information.
She then made a point of not looking at me while she filled out the rest of the thing and printed off my receipt.
“Thank you very much”, I said politely as I left, as I am not a man of poor manners. She, however, got in her flowers because I object to giving some fuckers my email address so they can add me to some kind of poxy mailing list from which you can never, ever unsubscribe.
I suspect my note to the lucky couple now reads “Go fuck yourselves you fucking cunting cunts”, which is not what I put in the first place at all. Honest.
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12 Responses to “No, you may not”
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December 7th, 2007 @ 12:09 am
Count yourself lucky; at least she said “please” once. That’s more than you’ll get from most!
December 7th, 2007 @ 1:57 am
This kind of unnecessary personal data collection only encourages suspicious behaviour. It ends up with you being woken up early in the morning in a hotel in Cheshire by the Special Branch wanting to know why 4 Irishmen and a Kiwi woman all have the surname “duck”. As in Donald – my personal favourite nom de shenanigans.
They weren’t bloody polite about it either.
December 7th, 2007 @ 5:57 am
Well of there’s ever a time you can tell people to go fuck themselves and get away with it, it should be their honeymoon.
December 7th, 2007 @ 8:25 am
I admit it – I did ‘Direct Marketing’ (aka Spam mail) for a major company in a previous life. Yes , I know there is a special circle of hell reserved for people like me. But I was young and it was a long long time ago.
Point is , once you get on a list like that it’s next to impossible to get off. Even if the company wants to remove your name (and they normally don’t try to hard) chances are your name and address are duplicated somewhere else in the company , so you get put back onto the list.
December 7th, 2007 @ 9:49 am
The Dyson Airblade.
A place in history to the man who reports back what it’s like to drop your nuts into the Dyson Airblade.
As for mailing lists, people sure are afraid of them. I have one with about 160 people on it, if I get a spit-back three days running I take the name off. I’ve had that number for about six months I’d say and the weird thing is that when you lose a few people you always get a few new subscribers. But you never get more than 160. It’s like there’s some weird 160-ish law governing the internet. Plus I’d say anything up to two thirds of the list don’t unsubscribe out of politeness.
December 7th, 2007 @ 11:03 am
You should have got the pair of cunts a 4 slice toaster and told them to fuck off.
The cheek.
December 7th, 2007 @ 11:36 am
You should have given them a gift voucher to be redeemed at Ron’s establishment.
December 7th, 2007 @ 11:37 am
Paul that circle is reserved for spammers, child molesters and people who answer their phones in the cinema.
December 7th, 2007 @ 1:01 pm
I reckon if everyone keeps entering as much bullshit information into every system then eventually they might start giving up on doing this shit.
yours sincerely
captain mongo dongo
087 1111111
email@email.com
1 main street
dublin
December 7th, 2007 @ 1:28 pm
I was asked for my name and address and phone no. when i tried to buy freeview box in argos in london.
December 8th, 2007 @ 9:44 am
When buying dogfood at the vets, I used to be asked for my name, my address and my dog’s name in full hearing of the entire waiting room, just cos it suited their accounts system. Eventually I refused, saying, “sell me the the f–king food without infringing my privacy or I’ll buy it somewhere else”. It worked. We should all push back on this kind of thing more and more.
December 13th, 2007 @ 6:22 pm
You’re dead right Twenty. I bought something tiny (I can’t remember, a 15 euro cd walkman or something) at Dixons a while back and they wanted to know what I’d had for breakfast the list of questions to enter into their system was that long. I felt sorry for the person working there who clearly was under orders to get all this info but sorry, my phone number,address,sperm count for a walk-in, walk-out purchase why?Even if I was buying a 5 grand flat screen why? Precisely so they can bother me this life and the next with their endless ‘special offers’, promotions etc. before they lose/flog my details to identity theft script kiddies.