While my beloved laptop was at the menders I was pretty much forced to spend some time on my desktop computer which also happens to be my music computer, or at least it used to be before the main hard drive died towards the end of last year.
In case you are wondering I did have a back up of the data (Yes!!!!), but I didn’t have a full bells and whistles back up of everything so that it could be magically restored at the mere press of a button (Bugger it!)
I did have a new hard drive installed back then, but between my trip to London for the gig plus Christmas and the attendant merriment I didn’t really have any time to go into my studio, nor the inclination if I’m perfectly honest.
But with no lovely Powerbook and my fingers not nimble enough for blogging via the iPhone keyboard I resentfully tripped into the dark room with machines that (no longer) go ping to switch on the ancient behemoth that is my G5 and look at the pristine, vacant and virginal operating system and pray, fervently, that somehow I would be able to remember how to install all of my music software programs, make them speak to one another, and then get some sound out of the big silver box again so I could actually hear what was going on.
It turned out that this was really, really, really boring.
And actually quite hard, involving tedious reading of manuals, endless waiting on hold and then getting through to superior young men who spoke languages I didn’t understand -purportedly English but actually some kind of muso-technospeak that is a Klingon-Sound Engineer hybrid -whose ultimate message was that my computer was old (like me) and crap (prob. like me, too) and if I just spent a few hundred dollars more then I’d be able to buy something even more complicated and hard to understand but I’d be much cooler.
(But no, they wouldn’t help me install anything because that is not what Tech Support does, I could only speak to them once I’d installed something and had a problem with it.)
You know, I really liked it better before when I could go into the dark room with machines that go ping, just turn it on and it all worked perfectly and make peculiar noises and irritate my neighbours.
Even better, write tiny pieces of music and charge extortionate amounts of money for them. That was LIVIN’!
Harking back on those halcyon days reminded me that the reason I was enduring this computer hell was because I was trying to restart my company, and to that end, why didn’t I just do a little networking for a change of pace and try to drum up some new business?
That way, I reasoned, I’d have some more money, could buy some new, shiny stuff, and even better, I could hire my own Klingon to come and do all this for me.
I love delegating.
So, off to LinkedIn I went and had a look through my contacts.
Aha! There was somebody in San Francisco who had contacted me and expressed an interest in my work a couple of years back (BT – Before Two). I sort of dropped the ball on that one, but I could look him up, ask if he wanted to hear more about it and then say I’d be up in the Bay Area next month, which is actually true – I’m taking the children up to visit a friend – and tie it all in. Husband is planning to remain in Stepford, which is a bit sad for me as it will be over Valentine’s day, but he’s very tied up in an important work thing right now. Anyway, I digress slightly..
I sent my contact a nice, light professional email:
I hope the New Year finds you well.
You may remember we spoke briefly a couple of years ago on the phone about (my work) and were perhaps going to speak further if the opportunity arose. (The contact came through xxx. )
Would this be something you’d be interested in hearing more about?
I plan to be in the Bay Area in mid February and again in March and would love to meet with you if you have some time.
Otherwise, always happy to chat on the phone.Best
Mothership
About half an hour later I got a very nice response:
Great to hear from you!
Yes, I would be very interested in talking to you.
Let me know when you will be here and we can meet for coffee or lunch.
Send an email or call my mobile
I was very happy! I wanted to share this with Husband immediately. And although my friend would surely watch the children for me, perhaps I could inveigle Husband into coming up to the city with us by impressing him with my business go-gettingness (is that a word?) and then he could look after them and I could take some meetings and come rushing back to them all full of news and excitement about entering the real world again with the full support of my family followed by romantic Valentine’s dinner…
I forwarded him the correspondence with a note of my own attached:
Hurrah! Might NEED u to come 2 SF 4 valentine w/end now ;)) cunning plan…
And ten minutes later I got an email from my contact.
Cunning indeed. Let me know when you’re here.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Just a bit embarrassing. I actually screamed out loud and went bright red when I saw that. It was a terrible, terrible moment and I could not sit still. Oh my GOD! How completely awful, although actually quite funny if it hadn’t been ME who was such a class A PRATT!.
I wrote back to him saying that I felt really silly, it had been meant for my husband and he wrote back saying he’d figured that out immediately but couldn’t resist the humour. He very kindly said he’d had a mixup like that recently where he’d sent an email to a colleague he’d meant for his wife and the colleague had been pretty put out (I wonder what he said?) so I wasn’t the only one, not to feel bad.
I can only hope that this means we’re on a more *cough* human footing – it certainly broke the ice. But every time I think about it I STILL want to plunge my head into a bucket of ice water and scream.
However, I reason that this was a baptism of fire. I have now made the first contact and with that made a total arse of myself, so I shan’t bat an eyelid at cold calling and dismissive rejection, deciphering Klingon/Engineerspeak will be a mere bagatelle and installing awkward music software on the wind-up G5 is going to be a palpable relief.
Onward and upward.
Please feel free to share with me your own communication *ahem* errors. (this is a polite way of BEGGING)
{ 24 comments }
Hmmm… cunning in a kind of suspender-stockings way indeed!
That’s made me hoot with laughter. I think we’ve all been there (the shame, the shame), so we’re with ya, sister! xxxx
Glad it’s not just me who does those things. LLGxx
ps T shirts? PAH. Am in thermal knickers etc
You are not the only one who does these things… not by a long stretch. Far too easily done! But at least you know Contact seems like a good man with a sense of humour!
Oh how funny and at least he had a sence of humour, could be worse!!
Personally, I think there ought to be one of those ten minute ‘review’ periods after hitting send, like there are when you comment on certain blogs. I’ve done it. I’m sure we all have. And we’ll probably do it all again. You’ve got to laugh!
Ha! A couple of years ago I sent a rather , ahem, explicit text intended for my lover to my son’s 17 year best friend by mistake…….I only realised when he replied by saying he would love to, but who was I? Luckily he did NOT have my number stored in his phone so hopefully he never realised who it come from. I try to believe he didn’t show it to my son……..
Cringe indeed.
Luckily, Contact Man sounds rather nice and no harm done.
We have all been there.
HAHAHAHA!!!! I was once working for a man whose first name was the same as my husbands, and which he insisted he be called by. During my first week, I once ended a phone call (distractedly doing something else) by saying “OK, bye Jason, love you!” which was how I signed off all the time to hubby. Luckily, he had an awesome sense of humour, thought it was hilarious, but never let me forget it!!
Ah yes, the joys of working for yourself or running your own company. Something goes awry and you say to yourself “I’ll just call up IT to get it sorted”, swiftly followed by the realisation that you are IT. Humph. Bummer.
But v funny about the email mishap. Have done a few of those myself.
BTW if you need tech assistance in the SF bay area/Silicon valley, let me know as have lots of former techie whiz colleagues out there who am sure would be happy to help you, free of charge (and no ‘on hold’ phone calls either).
LCM x
Didn’t mean that to all be in bold btw…. now you can see what I mean by needing help myself!
Should have stuck with investment banking. Technology? How the hell did I end up here?
*wanders off scratching head, looking for her glasses*
LCM x
Fuck – did it again. Give up.
Tee hee. He sounds like he had a sense of humour about it, at least – and as you say it may help break the ice.
At least it was an amusing email – not one slagging him off. I once left a voicemail for someone, complaining about a PR guy who was blocking me on an article I wanted to wrote and calling him a tosser – then realised I’d left it on the PR guy’s phone! I could have died of embarrassment.
adulterousellie= exactly, thus my RED FACE, arghh!
Mrs.T. Glad I made you laugh. I think it’s funny, too, though admittedly I’d prefer it if I could read about it happening to someone else. Could have been worse, though.
LLG. SPILL, GIRL!
Bin Bosnia. Ditto. I want details.
TheMadHouse. I wonder if it would have been better if he’d kept quiet? But then Husband would have told me he’d never got the email – even worse..
Tim. Oh, you’re SO right. If I had a Klingon I could get him to program a delay in emailing for me. That is the first thing I’ll do as soon as I hire one.
amjustme. That is a FABULOUS story. Thank you so much . I feel WAY better now.
Quixotic. I bet the other Jason was thrilled! And I love that story.
LCM. It’s so very dull doing all the computer stuff, yes, and thanks for the IT offer. (maybe they can help with the bold issue, tee hee)
NVG. Ha haha hahahah. I guess that article never got placed, eh? Good one.
thank you all for those great stories. I’m feeling less cringey now.
Absolutely hilarious~ I think it increased your chance of success 10,563%. I would certainly hire you after that, and definitely negates the initial long reply time.
xx
Amazingly, the PR guy became much more compliant and got me the interview I wanted! So maybe in a twisted way, it worked….
LOL!! You are NOT the only one! I once sent a text meant for my boyfriend to my dad! Fortunately dad was in the same room as me and I realized what I had done as his phone beeped. You should have seen the way i jumped to grab the phone from his hand and delete the text before he read it!
FloreatMagdalena – I hope you’re right! He’ll definitely be seeing me ‘a certain way’ anyhow..
NVG. Interesting.. Perhaps he realised that you would slag him off to other people and didn’t want that to happen! Gld you got the interview.
Amandeep. That is a great story. Thank GOD you got to the phone before your Dad.
Don’t worry sweet lady – I too have had numerous (I know – you would have thought I’d learnt my lesson the first time) , erm, errors with e-mails. One when I sent a ‘xxx is a complete cock’ to someone sitting directly opposite me in an open plan office. Wasn’t meant for him obviously. The complete feeling of terror as I realised and witnessed him opening it and reading it, will never be forgotten. if I remember rightly I went and hid in a cupboard for about two hours whilst trying to work out what to say…
i have sent many an email :
“give me a few sex” to my boss and colleagues at the UN. (c is next to x on the keypad);
and, since spellcheck INSISTS that the correct spelling for my last name is different than the way I currently spell it, I very often sign my official emails as,
“Shayma Sadist”. i hate spellcheck!
is there anything worse?
so dear MTFF, darling, youre not alone!
Details? You want details? Tsk, a hard task master…
Well, fortunately not a mistake actually made by me, but by a previous boyfriend, with whom I was living at the time. He had just been posted, permanently, to Hong Kong at very short notice. I, not being married to him, was not invited. But there was a lot of too-ing and fro-ing between him and the HR people about whether he could get tickets for me to go out and visit, whether if he travelled economy rather than business they could allow him to use what he had saved to get me a ticket out etc. etc. Finally they agreed on something and he emailed HR person to agree to her final request. Then he forwarded the email onto me saying something along the lines of ‘the cost of this will be about 50 blowjobs’. Obviously he didn’t send it to me though did he? Oh no. He sent it to the HR woman with no sense of humour, who he had yet to meet and was known for not suffering idiotic men at all. (respect to her, there were a lot of them at that company).
He had to BEG the IT department to break into her computer and delete the offening email. Money may have changed hands. He never made that mistake again…
Oh, and while I’m thinking about it.. another boyfriend, one at work this time (you’ll know my entire relationship history by the end of this comment) sent an email to me bitching about our boss, only it didn’t come to me but went straight to the boss. He got an official warning.
Moral of the story is don’t try to send me emails. They will only go to the wrong person.
Have your face stopped blazing red yet?
Hee! No tales to share but thanks for yours. Your friend sounds like a nice guy, hope he is able to help, and have fun up here in the Bay Area!
Shayma. I bet your boss was ECSTATIC! Did you get any interesting looks/replies? And Shayma Sadist has quite the ring to it. You could start up a whole new business like that (if you were a different kind of lady, natch) 😉
Brit in Bosnia. Oh, those are wonderful tales. I feel less stupid now although somewhat trepidatious about sending him further emails. I will be EXTREMELY careful about what I write and I’ll NEVER use my iPhone to do it again. Love affair with that device strictly OVER
Hello lovely! Ah yes, in the beginning of my engagement with my darling husband that my family now adores, my father was simply AWFUL to him. I put my foot down (quite rare in those days w/ v. strict papa) and he sent an uncomfortable, but slightly mollifying email to me. I typed a quick comment (in colloquial french, thank god) to my then-fiancé along the lines of “ha! you see, he’s trying to crawl back into our good graces!”…and of course promptly sent the frekaing thing to my father. Not only wanted to die, but was v. afraid I had destroyed all family relationships for eternity in an electronic napalm blast…thankfully dad didn’t really understand the meaning of the French phrase, and I did some crawling of my own…
Still remember the desire to projectile vomit when seeing the “send” button tho’.
See if that was me receiving that sort of email I would probably like the person more as it makes them seem more, well, like me: prone to mistakes, human and really shouldn’t be let lose with technology!
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