Meeting Request? My royal Irish, errrr, foot

The other day I received an e-mail with the subject “Meeting Request” from someone I don’t know.

Let’s call him “Nathaniel”.

“Nathaniel” was not actually sending me a meeting request at all. He was inviting me “to participate in a complimentary webinar”.

Well, complimentary webinars are my favorite kind of webinar, but why didn’t you just say “Invitation to a Webinar on XYZ Topic” in the subject line?

Were you thinking that I wouldn’t have opened it if it had been a plain old invitation - as opposed to a meeting request?

Oh, “Nathaniel.”

If that’s what you were thinking, you weren’t necessarily correct. Yes, I do give a pass to a lot of the webinars I’m invited to, but if the subject is of interest, I’ll generally look at the invite and at least give a thought to attending. And I even do this for non-complimentary webinars, if the topic is right.

You were correct, however, if you assumed that seeing that “Meeting Request” there in the subject would get me to open your e-mail.

After all, I couldn’t see what company you were from, just your first and last names, “Nathaniel Hawthorne”.

For all I know, “Nathaniel Hawthorne” is someone who works for one of my clients. Or he may be a prospect. Or he may be someone who finds my blogging so brilliant, so scintillating, that he wanted to talk to me about a column, a paid column, in The Washing Post. Or The New York Times. Or even the Daily News. (No, not this blog, the other one: Pink Slip.)

So I looked at the e-mail, and you can imagine how disappointed I was, especially given my little next-Maureen-Dowd fantasy, when I saw that it was just an invitation to attend a complimentary webinar at which “Nathaniel”, or someone else at his company, was going to try to sell me something.

Truly, the topic did look interesting enough, but I do know a thinly veiled sales pitch when I see one.

So, as it turns out, I’m busy on seminar day. And also on the days when any webinars that “Nathaniel” might want to invite me to are scheduled during the next 8-10 years or so.

Why is that?

Simple: because “Nathaniel” really annoyed me with the fake “Meeting Request”. Really annoyed me.

Sure, he might be able to weasel out of it by pointing out that, if I can’t attend, I can contact him for a private meeting - which I assume is also complimentary. And which I have no interest in.

I mentioned that I’ll be busy on webinar days for the next 8-10 years. Actually, I won’t know when the next webinars will be.

That’s because they had a very nice Opt Out button.

Thanks for that.

But if, in some other life, you do decide to invite me to another complimentary webinar, puh-leeze let me know it’s a webinar right off the bat.

Got that, “Nathaniel”?

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