Mistakes Happen

by John Passmore

It was the mistake early on that threw me – and if you let your guard drop for an instant, you can always make mistakes.

I was doing pretty well – I had people ringing me up. Admittedly, they were returning calls that I had made in response to their responses. But a call is a call and by ten in the morning, I was a third of the way to my six.

But then, after I had been through my 30-second thing and the guy on the other end said: “How does it all work?” I made the mistake

“Well it’s a discount club,” I said. “It’s called the Utility Warehouse. Have you ever heard of it?” and before I knew where I was, I was in the middle of the 30 second thing about the services.

Now you might consider this no great disaster – after all that’s what we want to do, isn’t it? Tell people about the club. But I had already told him too much.

“OK,” he said. “I’ll look it up>”

“I’ll send you an email about it,” I offered quickly. “”What’s your email address?”

“It’s OK, I’ll look it up.”

Moral: Don’t answer any questions until you have the three key pieces of information: Name, phone number and email address.

So that threw me and by 5.00 p.m. I had only talked to four people and it was time to light the barbeque. Thank heavens I had to go across to the garden centre to buy more charcoal. The man on the checkout looked cheerful but there was a woman in the queue behind me. But she was looking at the displays. She didn’t seem to be in a hurry.

Anyway, I was desperate. So I said to the checkout man: “You seem cheerful. Is it the weather or are you always this cheerful.”

“Oh it’s not the weather. I’m always cheerful.”

“Well did you know cheerful people can make a very good extra income? I could tell you about it if you like. Have you got 30 seconds?

And I then proceeded to do the fastest 30 seconds you’ve ever heard… while the woman behind me watched goggle-eyed.

But guess what, I got his email address and his phone number!

Still one short though. But after the hot dogs, and taking Theo to Athletics and dropping in on a team meeting before going back to the track, I found myself hanging around waiting for the high jump to finish. There were a lot of parents hanging around. I wandered over and stood next to a man with long grey hair. He could have been any age.

”Not so bad hanging about on an evening like this – I can’t be doing with those dark winter evenings,” I ventured.

Thinking about it now it was a ridiculous opening but the thing is that nobody thinks about that at the time. Within a couple of minutes he was telling me he’d played football in the afternoon.

“I bet you know a lot of people,” I said, impressed. “The rest of the team and so on. Did you know you can make a very good extra income if you know a lot of people? I could tell you about it in 3o seconds. D’you want to hear it?”

“All right, “ he said.

So I told him – and he gave me his email address. But guess what, he couldn’t remember his phone number.

Maybe he just didn’t want to give it to me but I had the impression that he really never did ring himself, as he put it.

Anyway this time I didn’t feel it was my fault.