Struggling with simple things

Today I spent most of my morning rebuilding somebody else's spreadsheet. This is quite involving, and today I actually enjoyed it for a change; there's some satisfaction to be had from tidying things up and making them work better. Except because I was sleep deprived from waking up early to talk to people in Seattle about Important Things (and late last night to talk to people in London about other Important Things) I missed a few chances to press F4 and had to redo some of my formulas after I'd sent it to the recipient.

We were both a bit behind the curve; it took me twenty minutes to demonstrate some simple mathematical truths, and then it was time for lunch.

I made the mistake today of taking lunch to work. While it would normally be a wonderful thing that my girlfriend had been so kind as to cook a meal for me, it did mean that I failed to leave the building all day, and this was particularly painful as I had an unexpected call mid-afternoon depositing a pile of new work in my lap, when I could otherwise have been gambolling in the sunny, buttercup-strewn meadows of Hong Kong.

On the positive side, I did leave my seat, which meant that a man in India who kept trying to sell me software couldn't ring me up. Although we have caller ID in the office, I can only see that it's an international call, which either means somebody in Japan/Singapore/China/India/Australia calling up to discuss Important Things, or it's a desperate software salesman calling me for the nth time today. And because it might be the former, I can't just ignore all the calls.

I don't mind when he calls every day, and I give him the pro forma rebuttal that I need to speak to my manager before approving any software purchase. (Which is true - it happens that it's hard for me to catch my manager at an opportune moment as he's fantastically busy.) That would be fine. But when he calls back every two hours asking if I've made a decision yet, it gives me the impression he's a bit too eager for our business. Surely there should be some playing hard-to-get, rather than just coming over far too desperate?

More to the point, there's not even a t-shirt or a squashy rubber ball in this for me. And I love corporate branded tat, especially when it's a rubber ball emblazoned with the name of a software consultancy somewhere or other. In previous jobs, there was a steady procession of software vendors who'd deposit all sorts of junk: pens that exploded in your hand while you tried to sign contracts, grey nylon t-shirts designed for obese American football players, stress balls with built in electric shock devices. It never really swayed anyone's decision on whether to purchase or not, but it did at least show that they cared. Now I don't make decisions about buying enormous pieces of computer code that don't do quite what the salesman imagined they might, I don't get any more of this corporate flotsam.¹

But I get this guy - he keeps calling and calling, but no flowers, no chocolates, not even a slight eerie anthropomorphic mascot for me to lose down the back of my desk. What's the world coming to? Maybe I should try to coach him on sales techniques to accomodate slightly fey, apathetic Englishmen abroad. Or he could try and add me as a friend on Facebook. (I wonder if that's the salesman-equivalent to buying the ladeeez one too many drinks with umbrellas in them.)

¹ Or is it jetsam? I really must be tired if I can't remember the difference any more...