The Slice Telemarketers Should Try Being A Little More Upfront
If just once a telemarketing caller got right to the point and admitted up front that he or she wanted money for something, we might actually stay on the line and listen to the pitch.
Slice answers: Lots of people, we’re told, refer to the Lilac City as “The Can.”
And we’ve decided that it would be a good name for a TV show. Or a hairstyle. Or better yet, a newspaper column.
“Hey, did you read in ‘The Can’ that some old lady in Hillyard brushes her cat twice a day?”
“You don’t say.”
What’s wrong with this picture: On-site day-care services greatly reduce worker absenteeism, according to the results of a survey of 300 companies noted this week in The Wall Street Journal.
However, only 6 percent of the companies offer such services.
Just wondering: What would be the 1996 equivalent of announcing that, because of a failed romance or family dishonor, you are running off to join the Foreign Legion?
Declaring your intentions to appear on a daytime TV talk show?
Running for public office?
We’ll send a coffee mug to the reader submitting the best answer in writing by noon on Wednesday. And while you are considering that, you might want to note that 1939’s classic “Beau Geste” is on KSPS-TV tonight at 8 o’clock.
Follow the written instructions: Bumper stickers don’t usually do much for us. (It goes back to being forced by co-workers to listen to Paul Harvey during a summer job long ago.) But, even though they’ve been around Spokane a while, we never fail to enjoy the ones that say “Put down the phone and drive.”
Warm-up questions: What local health club is most like “Melrose Place”? Given what we all know about about the way so many people carelessly smack their car doors into other vehicles after pulling into spaces in parking lots, how do owners of new cars ever summon the courage to take their shiny new wheels to the supermarket or the mall?
Today’s Slice question: What Spokane area grade school is most likely to produce kids who will grow up to be the men and women who will find solutions to our civic problems?
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Drawing
MEMO: The Slice appears Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; fax (509) 459-5098.