Today, I have been mostly listening to spam.

See this?

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It’s a part of one of the spam comments I get in the inbox for this blog every day.

That’s what I was listening to this morning.

It was like spam. All the words were English and all were understandable as individuals but, together, it was like listening to spam.

“I believe in communication”, he says. He does too! He talked.

“I think I’m better than everyone”, he could have said. He was, after all, a salesmen. These people, for me, rate almost at the bottom of any pile or any list.

It reminds me of someone else. It’s not a good memory.

I sit looking at this man and watching his mouth move and listening to the words he is saying – individually – but not hearing them for there is no point to them. They’re all business terms. Strung together in the latest business fashion. The ‘why say anything in a straightforward manner when it can be said in a thousand nonsensical words’. Oh, how I HATE it.

He mentioned the fact that he liked to communicate – A LOT. He didn’t have to. I could tell. I was mostly silent. ‘Communicate with that!’, I thought, triumphantly. After a while he realised that it was not me he should be talking to. Good.

We started at the start. He had his luggage stolen in Paris. I wanted to laugh. Is that so wrong of me? Well, yes, it is but I really didn’t care. I couldn’t place his American accent.

He tells me about all the wonderful things he is doing and all the wonderful companies he is/has been involved with. It’s just like when people reel off the number of famous people they have met or the people they have slept with. It’s not really boasting. It’s just ignorant. The problem is that I am, in an instant, seriously unimpressed.

Later he even ‘drops in’ how many hours he has flown because, in his long life, what he hasn’t done isn’t worth the effort. Probably. Do I show the face of someone who doesn’t care? He may be all for communication but he’s crap at reading people. I don’t care.

But I digress. Back to the beginning. After the Paris bit. After the ‘I like my coffee black because that’s the colour of me inside’ (WTF????). After the ‘I like to communicate’ for the first time. He didn’t rate the Germans, apparently. I nearly said ‘Then you haven’t dealt with the Swedes’, but I didn’t. After all, he likes communication so much that he doesn’t allow the other person to communicate and so I didn’t get the chance.

I ask, ‘Whereabouts in the US do you come from because I can’t place your accent?’

‘I’m from Sweden’, he replies.

I thank God that I hadn’t been able to communicate with him prior to this. And then, again, I keep thinking that I wish I had! You never know, it might have got him communicating a little less.

Probably not, though.

To be honest he’s checking us out. The company he is representing is looking for companies for ‘acquisition’. ‘Acquisition’ – it’s a nice word. Better than ‘Buy so we can take your knowledge/expertise’, I suppose. But that’s what they’re after. Whichever way you look at it, I am NOT the right person for this meeting.

At the first opportunity I get out.

After lunch and a cigarette, I catch him about to leave. I shake his hand. ‘Nice to meet you’, I lie. ‘I hope the rest of your trip is less eventful’, I add. It’s OK. He’s not listening to me anyway. He had complained that the French Police hadn’t wanted to know; hadn’t listened to him.

Or, just maybe, he wasn’t listening to them? For me, the greatest and most important thing in the art of communication is to be able to listen. I guess in his long, varied and full life, he’s missed that bit?

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