A Thanksgiving Message About Reaching Out and Touching

Thanksgiving seems to be such an innocuous holiday, it doesn’t offend anybody for religious reasons or any other reason — except maybe those who study history — and it’s such a good time to reach out and spam somebody. At least that’s what the marketing guys, and especially those engaged in the Sacramento real estate business, seem to believe.

You know, if I haven’t heard from you all year long, maybe today is not the best day to send me Thanksgiving greetings. Don’t reach out and touch me with your spammy emails and hokey Thanksgiving cards, for I am not grateful for a nonexistent relationship with a person I do not know. I also don’t want to thank anybody on your behalf, so don’t give me a list of organizations and individuals I’m supposed to reach out and touch, simply because you demanded it.

I asked one such spammer a few days ago to take me off his database. I’ll never refer anybody to him and now that his name is so deeply ingrained, shoved into the irritation portion of my brain where I store names to stay clear of, I’ll make it a purpose to tell my clients to hire any other person except this guy. Clueless marketing like this can backfire. Because when I asked him to remove me, instead of apologizing and doing it, he tried to defend himself by saying it was just a holiday greeting.

It’s spam. Don’t reach and touch me. This is almost as bad as showing up on my doorstep and ringing my doorbell over and over, begging me to buy whatever worthless crap you are selling. These are the days I wished I lived in a two-story home so I could pour water on the creep down below.

Save your Thanksgiving greetings for those people you know and care about. Wish the checkout clerk at the grocery store a Happy Thanksgiving because the poor guy is working today and you are not. But don’t think of this holiday as an opportunity to market and promote yourself. Give it a rest.