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Stealing Hope And Crushing Dreams-All In A Day’s Work For Me

July 17, 2009 By Jenny Ryan 5 Comments

A few years ago when I began to conceive of the idea for world domination, I decided that the first thing I needed was a business license. Because you want to be “official” and orderly as  your takeover progresses, not like those slapdash, haphazard rulers who just throw things together at the last minute and make it all up as they go along.

Of course this meant I had to come up with a name for my business, which completely stressed me out. I mean, I was years away from achieving the title of Her Highness, Supreme Empress Of The Universe-so how could I possibly know what name I would need for my supporting infrastructure this far in advance? It’s like when you go to college, and just at the moment you realize how much there is in the world that you don’t know, they want you to pick a major and decide what you are going to do with the rest of your life.

So I did what any focused, competent leader would do: I picked the first name I thought of, and figured that I could work out all of the pesky details later.

So I received my business license, and then I went back to my day job of subverting brainwashing tutoring the up-and-coming generation of soon-to-be adults. And I never gave my business license another thought, until I started receiving lots of phone calls from people who wanted to discuss my business with me. Which normally would be a good thing, but not here.

Because these people didn’t want to talk to me about Spanish tutoring (i.e., the actual service provided by my business).

No, they wanted to sell me leads for my business that would enable me to sell more life insurance. In my life insurance business. Which offered life insurance. For you to insure your life.

And it wasn’t just one person calling me about this, which could’ve been chalked up to making an honest mistake; no, it’s been a steady stream of people calling me with this same kind of offer.

Apparently, by including the word “life”  in the name of my business, I accidentally triggered some sort of secret business alarm that connects to every single human being who has anything at all to do with the selling of life insurance.

I don’t know why this offends me so much, but it does. I mean, it’s not like I lack for things that actually do call for a healthy dose of righteous indignation. Like the fact that, although his name does not appear anywhere, on any official documentation for my business, all my business-related mail for some reason now comes addressed to my husband. Even though, could he handle an emergency involving the need to construct a sentence using the imperfect Spanish subjunctive, making sure to apply the correct sequence of tenses? I THINK NOT!

So of course, the only option that now remains is for me to mock these callers in my own special way. Sure, I could be polite to them, but then I would have nothing entertaining to write about here, so, pshaw, whatever, politeness.

I attended a college that prided itself on turning out great masses of white-collar professionals, so as soon as I receive one of these calls I can immediately picture the caller, clad in their crisp shirts and ties (or blouses and skirts, as the case may be), sitting up straight on the edge of their chair, earnest and driven in their quest to, um, do whatever it is that these kind of people do. (I was an artsy-fartsy language major, remember.) And then we have a conversation that goes something like this:

Perky, professional insurance industry worker: “Hello, is this [name of my “company”]

Me: (Ugh-here we go again.)

Me: (In my perky, professional voice, just to string them along for a few moments) “Yes it is.”

PPIIW: “Great. May I plese speak with the president of such and such/the director of so-and-so/Jennifer Ryan?”

Me: (Switching over to my exhausted, world-weary voice) “This is she.”

PPIIW: “And so, your company sells life insurance, correct? ”

Me: (perkily, knowing that this will totally throw them off their game) “Nope!”

PPIIW: (pauses, trying to regroup and figure out what to do next, not quite resigned yet to losing this sale) “So this is not an insurance company?”

Me: (enjoying the sound of their hopes deflating, because I’m kind of bitchy like that) “Nope. I’m a Spanish tutor. And the company is just me-I’m the owner and sole employee.” (Or sometimes, if I’m wanting to sound more “official”, I refer to myself as an Educational Consultant, or an Academic Coach.)

Now I can actually hear the sound of their crisp business attire wilting, which makes me feel even more smug, as I am most often clad in my frumpy, shapeless, but oh-so-comfy pajamas, neiner, neiner, my life is so much better than you-ours.

PPIIW: (mentally releasing the amount of money they’d hoped to make from this phone call) “Well, I’m sorry to bother you.”

Me: (growing increasingly perky, the more they become depressed)  “Oh, no problem. Thanks so much for calling.” (Which, as everyone knows, in The South is a polite way of saying, “Ha, ha, @#$! you.”Among other things.)

Of course, when I finally achieve the position of Supreme Empress, I will hire people to be sarcastic for me, thereby freeing me to focus on more pressing issues, such as ridding the world of such abominations as “diet, caffeine-free soda”. Because then you’re just basically drinking brown water. And seriously, what is the point of that?

So if you’re interested in filling one of the positions of Official Snarker Of The Universe, start polishing up your resume. I’ll let you know when we here at World Domination Headquarters are accepting applications.

Filed Under: Going Solo(preneuring), Playing Well With Others, These Are The Days Of My Life

All Work And No Play…

May 11, 2006 By Jenny Ryan Leave a Comment

…makes me a loaded grenade of snarkiness just waiting for something to come along and pull out my pin.

I am in Chicago at a conference, and after 3 days I must admit that there is really nothing inherently funny about professional conferences. I’ve been forced to find creative ways to throw out phrases like, “totally talking out of my ass” from time to time just to lighten up the tone a bit.

Sure, we do have a conference leader who spends approximately 60% of his time “shush-ing” us from the front of the room, as if we were all 5 years old. But that’s not so much funny as it is unbelievably irritating, to the point where I just want to rush up onto the stage, rip out his tongue, and with it club him into insensibility because please, dear God, the shush-ing, MAKE IT STOP!

And then today we had a speaker who took an extremely interesting approach to group presentations. His talk consisted of verbally abusing us for about an hour and a half (for example, calling us a big bunch of whiners) and then (Important Side Note: I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP) if we complained, or questioned his approach, or really even dared to say anything at all, he made us pay him $2. I’m a little fuzzy on all the details of exactly how this is going to work, but apparently the process of our paying him to be really mean to us is going to turn us all into amazingly successful business owners.

Sadly, tub poo is actually starting to seem like a pleasant alternative.

Filed Under: Going Solo(preneuring), Playing Well With Others Tagged With: professional conferences

Rebel Yell

April 20, 2006 By Jenny Ryan 4 Comments

I’m sure it will come as no surprise to any of you to learn that I have an extremely well-developed inner rebel. But the weird thing about her is the the things she chooses to rebel against.

For example, I will happily dump every single trash can in our house, tie up the garbage bags, and deposit them outside the kitchen door in the garage. But I absolutely refuse to take those same garbage bags and place them in the big trash can that we take to the curb every Tuesday. I just now went outside and checked, and it is exactly 24 extra steps from the kitchen doorstep to the trash cans. I refuse to walk 24 extra steps because I believe that in doing so, I am winning some kind of moral victory. (Please know that I never said any of this is rational.)

Fortunately I am married to a man who is afflicted with this same issue. But where my rebellion is up front and in your face his is more passive, so you don’t actually realize what’s going on until you notice for the 2 bazillionth time in a row that, Under No Circumstances Whatsoever will he retrieve clean towels from the linen closet and hang them on the hooks in the bathroom.

I’m not really sure what this proves other than the fact that if, as I am, you are the firstborn child of 2 firstborn parents, married to another firstborn child of a  firstborn parent, that there will occasionally be moments in your marriage when you both act like rams who are continually smashing into one another, horns locked in mortal combat. Except that you’re not fighting for anything important, like a mate. You’re just fighting to defend your right to be stubborn about really stupid stuff.

My inner rebel also showed up A Lot in my work life, and I’m sure you can imagine just how much my employers enjoyed that. It did not matter what rule they made; I was an expert in finding a way to react with moral outrage and righteous indignation, thus allowing me to feel totally justified in completely ignoring said rule.

However now that I’m in my 30’s I’ve been thinking that maybe, just maybe, I could try to do things a little differently. And so for the last 7 months I have been taking a class to actually become certified at this profession of being a Life Coach. And that is also why I have been absent from my blog for the last week. This Tuesday was our 2 1/2 hour final oral exam, and while I do excel at totally-making-things-up-as-I-go-along and pulling-things-out-of-my-ass-at-the-last-minute, I thought that perhaps I should actually prepare for this exam, so as not do undo all my hard work of the last 7 months (and the 4 months before that).

And so I am very happy to report that I successfully managed my inner rebel, and now I am officially a Certified Life Coach.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming of humorously commenting on all of the goofy contrasts that we, personally experience in life. (And thankfully, there are lots.)

Filed Under: All About Me, Going Solo(preneuring), Playing Well With Others

With Their Finger On The Pulse Of My Business

March 31, 2006 By Jenny Ryan 2 Comments

Just recently I applied for, and received, my very first business license. And all of a sudden, just like in 5th grade when I got a brand new package of stickers, people are falling all over themselves to be my new best friend.

At first I was a little concerned that my county might have sold my name and contact information to all of these service providers, and that our community’s financial success might possibly depend on the number of accountants, IT consultants, and merchant account providers that I personally could hire.

But my husband said that most likely it’s just that I’ve now become part of the public record (no more lurking, I guess), and that that is why I am suddenly attracting all of this new attention.

Now, I am all for people growing their businesses. So I’m not really minding the deluge of snail mail and phone calls. Especially when I receive an offer that is so aligned, so clearly focused, so crisply in tune with the heartbeat of what I am offering to my clients (Spanish tutoring for high school students) as this one:

“Let us help you with your embroidery or silk screening needs! Shirts, caps, bags, etc today!. Call us first!”

Are we a perfect match or what?

Filed Under: Going Solo(preneuring), These Are The Days Of My Life Tagged With: being a business owner

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