First-Name Familiarity Deemed Turnoff by Total Strangers

Yes, I deeply resent such foolish manipulation.

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(SALEM, Ore.) - How about that? Somebody calls you by phone to solicit and offer for a service or product you have no interest in, and within the first 10 seconds you get called by your first name. Instant intimacy, unwanted and uncalled for.

This is particularly offensive when done by a young person seemingly reading their cues from a commercially produced script. I may be thrice their age. How do they get off trying to cozy up to me with an old-chum tactic of trying to get me to treat them just like I've known them for years and years?

Have they no respect for the obvious fact that I am still a relative stranger?

Yes, I deeply resent such foolish manipulation. To me, this is a blantant affront. And adding insult to emotional injury, the so-called representative of Company X actually wants to hook me to something I have no legitimate interest in acquiring.

As a one-time social worker, I was advised by my very first supervisor to never ever use a first name in addressing an older person unless you first gained that permission. And it is a rule I still tend to honor and follow, now that I have entered senior citizen ranks.

Besides, the idea of someone telling me how to spend my money is anathema. Have no not solid judgment to make my own decision? Why try to imprint an artificial demand for some product or service when none exists? I do not crave having ruffled feathers.

Let the incentive for a sale be strictly mine alone. Playing puppet to a salesperson is not quite my concept of fair play. As they say in Australia, it will simply boomerang!

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Salem-News.com Community Writer Barry Lee Coyne brings to our readers stories from his combined career of journalism and gerontology, and explains that these paths shaped his values. This writer-therapist often views the world as the masks of comedy and tragedy placed upon the scales of justice. For him, optimism inevitably wins. "Lyrical Lee" has traveled to 30 nations aboard and was once a press intern at the UN. His first published article was in The NY Daily News in '59, dealing with the need for integrity in public office.

He also launched the nation's first tele-conference on health education for shut-ins, created the Eldermentors project in VA to pair retirees with immigrant students needing role models, and was the main catalyst behind CCTV's "Public Public" panel show here in Salem. Lee received his BA in International Relations and an MSW in community organization. He currently serves as a member of Salem's Library Advisory Board. To send Lee an email, please write to this address: notcoy@netzero.net