I see the ability to say no as being something you can do in a career, not in a job or bottom of the barrel job. Wal-Mart employees have their "no" guidelines written for them though so they can always just fall back on the good ole rule book whereas I make it up as I go along for the good or the bad. It most definitely is a luxury being able to say no and say no often no doubt about it. But on the flip side I'm FAR more effective at my job when I'm not focused on one extremely difficult, pissed off customer who's project I could have/should have avoided. Plus we're far more profitable when we're not reinventing the wheel every production cycle. When the sky isn't falling my quotations are more creative and better written and I actually find some enjoyment in the application engineering of it rather than just looking at it as a bunch of hurdles before a bunch of money appears in an account somewhere.
When i was in college, in the dorms, there was an attractive girl that stopped by my room when my roommate was out. She said she was trying to raise money to go on some trip to Cancun or something for spring break. In order to raise money, she was selling subscriptions to magazines. I apologized and said that I didnt have any money and she tried the pity approach but I still turned her down but felt kind of bad. Cue two years later when I'm in an apartment and some dude stops by with the same approach. he ends up coming in and sees my roommates pipe and we smoke a bowl. then he comes clean that this is an actual job. I guess there's a "chaperon" and then a bunch of college age kids that get a 15 passenger van and drive from city to city selling subscriptions and use the "raise money for spring break trip" pitch to sucker people in.
I didn't think "English is the official language of the US" would get some folks' knickers all in a twist, so let me rephrase: "English is the unofficial official language of the US." Y'know, like the Cowboys is "America's Team."
Maybe it's me, but wouldn't it be a better sales idea to break in and leave a card, than to try to convince them......this will net you tons of sales....honest. Please try it, i like the news.
Over summer I spent a lot of time in Greece working as a barman and sometimes as a 'PR'. My job was to stand on the street outside the bar, go up to people and drag them into the bar. Either by letting them know about the offers we had or just using my natural charm which had mixed results. Most people were utterly sick of being pestered everytime they walked by a bar by people trying to drag them in. Sometimes the job was a lot of fun, was a great way to meet girls. However some of the responses you got were really harsh and I suppose people had a right to be pissed off. But I got free drinks and a wage and you got used to being told to fuck off in no uncertain terms several times an hour. Do you get much of this in American holiday resorts?
Irish people told you to fuck off when you offer them booze? What? That's just a little TOO far fetched for me to believe. I don't believe for a second that the streets of Ireland have a single pedestrian who is not either walking to or from a bar, so either you were talking to unconscious people lying in the gutter, or you lie. What's it gonna be, shamrock?
My face when I realized solaris' first sentence indicated he was in Greece at the time <-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I went to Greece a few years ago as part of a huge group of friends from high school, and we used to love those guys. There was one place in Santorini that the Turkish doorman practically shit himself when we let him persuade 20 of us to come in and eat delicious pizza. We had these pre arranged places to eat as part of the vacation package, but we being Americans found pretty much all the food inedible and the service to be so absurdly slow that it just wasn't worth it. No one wants to spend 3 hours at dinner in some stuffy ass restaurant eating horse droppings when we could be in and out of the pizza place in a half hour and start prowling the boardwalk and drinking Absynthe. We probably ate there 6 times in the 3 days we were there, and that same Turkish guy was standing outside, ever vigilant, every single time. What I can't figure out is what kind of magical oven worked by slave elves could produce 20 pizzas in 15 minutes, cooked perfectly and honestly better than 90% of the pizza I've ever had. We never witnessed anyone abusing the door guys though, they all seemed happy as a pig in shit 24-7. I also happen to live in a resort town here in the good ole US of A, and I have happened to work a door at a bar. 90% of people just ignore you if they're not interested, but luckily the population around here is heavily Irish. All I had to do was mention that we had a late night kitchen and served drinks a full hour later than most of the town. Guys actually stopped mid step as if I just whacked them with Thor's hammer, turned around, eyes wide like a child on Christmas morn', and promptly sidled up to the bar. Of course the problem with my town isn't that people are being pestered to come into the place, its that there just aren't enough bars to accommodate all the drunks. You should see it on St. Paddy's day.... it's literally shoulder to shoulder as far as the eye can see, bars are charging 40 dollar covers... and people are paying it... and the streets descend into total anarchy by about 3:30 in the afternoon. By 8:30, no one is left standing.