Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Is Corporate Etiquette Dead?

Ok...it's a pseudo rant:

So, apparently way back in '09 I sent an email to someone for booking services for an entertainment client of mine. Of course, as is the case if you find someone on Craigslist (yes I know, what was I thinking) you never hear back from them. No biggie right? Well, said "professional" sends me an email today...7 months later, asking me to ask the same entertainment client I referenced in my email to help promote their entertainment client. Said "professional" even had the nerve to include the original email I sent to them, with the time stamp on it.

Seriously?! It's amazing I'm even having this rant because this screams of extreme unprofessionalism. I'm a big believer in not contacting people for professional favors if I know for a fact that I ignored their email when they reached out to me - especially if more than 6 months has passed. There's something that just screams of opportunism & poor business etiquette to do so anyway. My issue with this offender is the following:

1. When I first emailed them, they never even emailed me back to say "thanks but no thanks". This is a must IMO because the offending party put an ad out on Craigslist looking for people to respond to them. So, at the very least (especially since they later came back to me looking for assistance) they are required to do that little bit of follow up.

2. To email me 7 months later, you don't have the right to come straight out and ask for a favor. You need to butter me up first.

3. If you're going to do a cold call approach like that, at least have the decency to delete the original message that I sent to you. If it was a normal interactive person where we had communicated back and forth occasionally, leaving my original message would make sense. It would help to remind me of why we were chatting and encourage me to want to help you. Unfortunately, since I saw the time stamp and noticed that I had emailed this offender in September only to receive silence until they needed something, I was quick to shut them down.

This just goes to show that everyone wants to be in business but not everyone is professional enough to deserve to be in business.

3 comments:

@LStacey said...

I'd name and shame too...

Unknown said...

I agree with your last line

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