Sunday, July 24, 2005
The swear words have not yet been invented
Hi
Hope you are well.
I recently emailed you with some questions.
Just wondering if you received my email and will be able to reply soon.
Best wishes,
That bloke who only emailed you five days ago with his four questions about how you became a proofreader and how he could become one himself and ooh maybe even compete with you for the same clients, what larks.
P.S. Have you received this yet? Well? Come on. I want to start making some easy money on the side (I'm a lawyer/teacher/whatever by trade and have a lucrative sideline selling crack to kittens but I feel somehow I'm just NOT GREEDY OR ANNOYING ENOUGH). Come on come on. Prod prod. Poke poke. Cough it up, girl. Tell me the secret of your marvellous super success.
Hem.
This time I was polite, if frosty. And then, after I'd answered his damn questions, then I was what could be perceived as rude. But not half as rude as I could have been, or wanted to be.
Of course then he mailed back all shocked and appalled. I replied - after the customary moments of regret and a bolstering phone call - to let him know that in fact I hadn't let him have both barrels, just the relatively reasonable and measured one. Gah! if he had any sense of what I've got in the other one, all primed and ready to go, he'd be hiding under his bed with five head of newly-hired bodyguard. So I told him how awfully rude and presumptuous I find it of people - often with full-time jobs, desirous of a sideline, often demonstrating right then and there their inability to do the job in a way that I used to find funny but don't anymore - to ask me how they can make my life a bit harder. Apparently 'our dialogue is over', so I doubt I'll hear back, but the point is to state your case and stand up for yer bad self and not just go and slink under a rock, bulging with more swallowed and suppressed bile like a lizard full of mouse.
Later: he did mail back. Contrite, understanding, decent. I replied hopefully in same vein, and gave him the little advice I'm not even sure I'm qualified to give. I could blub over what a narrow escape that was, how we might both have been unhappy but are now reassured of how fundamentally alright people are. But that would be far too girly. I mean, ugh.
Hope you are well.
I recently emailed you with some questions.
Just wondering if you received my email and will be able to reply soon.
Best wishes,
That bloke who only emailed you five days ago with his four questions about how you became a proofreader and how he could become one himself and ooh maybe even compete with you for the same clients, what larks.
P.S. Have you received this yet? Well? Come on. I want to start making some easy money on the side (I'm a lawyer/teacher/whatever by trade and have a lucrative sideline selling crack to kittens but I feel somehow I'm just NOT GREEDY OR ANNOYING ENOUGH). Come on come on. Prod prod. Poke poke. Cough it up, girl. Tell me the secret of your marvellous super success.
Hem.
This time I was polite, if frosty. And then, after I'd answered his damn questions, then I was what could be perceived as rude. But not half as rude as I could have been, or wanted to be.
Of course then he mailed back all shocked and appalled. I replied - after the customary moments of regret and a bolstering phone call - to let him know that in fact I hadn't let him have both barrels, just the relatively reasonable and measured one. Gah! if he had any sense of what I've got in the other one, all primed and ready to go, he'd be hiding under his bed with five head of newly-hired bodyguard. So I told him how awfully rude and presumptuous I find it of people - often with full-time jobs, desirous of a sideline, often demonstrating right then and there their inability to do the job in a way that I used to find funny but don't anymore - to ask me how they can make my life a bit harder. Apparently 'our dialogue is over', so I doubt I'll hear back, but the point is to state your case and stand up for yer bad self and not just go and slink under a rock, bulging with more swallowed and suppressed bile like a lizard full of mouse.
Later: he did mail back. Contrite, understanding, decent. I replied hopefully in same vein, and gave him the little advice I'm not even sure I'm qualified to give. I could blub over what a narrow escape that was, how we might both have been unhappy but are now reassured of how fundamentally alright people are. But that would be far too girly. I mean, ugh.
