YOU'RE DOING GREAT; NOW, LEAVE ME ALONE

When my daughters were toddlers and beyond, I responded to their actions and words by naming them -- clever, resourceful, kind, persistent etc. Sometimes, I would tell them something was unkind or dangerous, Now, my daughters are doing the same with their children.  They are going beyond "good job" and "stop that" to name the qualities they are seeing.  

I applaud this feedback.

It appears, however, that a great many people did not receive positive feedback from their parents and caregivers. or possibly they received a boatload of negative feedback. How else to explain the multiple requests for assessment I receive daily?

Almost every time I visit a doctor, hire someone to provide a service, or order something online, a survey asking how he/she/they did will follow.  Sometimes the requests for assessment come before the service is provided . . .

Seriously?  Are they that needy?

I have a life, people.  I'm not going to fill out your surveys.  

Here's another puzzlement.  I listen to a lot of podcasts, which often involve interviews.  It used to be that an interviewee would occasionally respond to a question by saying, "That's a great question."  Now, hardly an interview goes by without these words being spoken.

Honestly, the questions aren't always all that great.  And even if they are, isn't it the job of the interviewer to ask great questions? Is the interviewee stalling in order to come up with an answer? Inquiring minds want to know.  

And while I'm on my soapbox, I'm also not going to open the multiple texts I receive asking for money.  I'm going to block those numbers every time.  It's not that I'm against making charitable contributions.  To the contrary, I make them regularly. It's just that I don't want to see these requests in my text feed. Texts are for brief communications with family and friends.  

So, leave me alone, already. 

Same with requests for political contributions.  Not on my text feed.  Not on your life.  

And then there are the phone calls.  I no longer answer calls from unknown phone numbers.  If a call isn't from a scammer, I assume the caller will leave a message.  Come to think of it, scammers leave messages too . . .

For some reason email stopped working on my phone a few months ago, and I decided not to try to fix it.  So, I'm not dealing with those incessant dings anymore. Yay!  (Actually, a friend suggested turning off notifications for emails, which I did, but not having emails on my phone is even better.)

As for people who come to the house wanting to sell me something, I try to be polite.  I tell them they may give me literature, but I will not agree to anything while speaking through my front door.  (And I'm definitely not inviting them in.)

So, is it just me or do I have companions in wanting to ward off these intrusions?

 

                                        Photo by Nadine Shaabana on Unsplash