When Getting Rejected Is More Hilarious Than Hurtful

As a blogger, I have had more than my fair share of receiving rejections from all sorts of companies. Most of the time the rejections come in the form of no replies to my emails but sometimes there are direct rejections which is fine with me since I am not in the big league and I always mentally prepare myself to be rejected.

More than a week ago, I was at a café with a hair salon attached to it and just walked into the salon with the intention of asking the owner whether I could have colouring services at a special price if I reviewed the service. After all, isn’t most things in life negotiable? I passed the owner my card and before I could explain myself further, he mentioned that they deal with bloggers and would I like to meet his business development manager. Of course I said I would. Down came the manager and he mentioned that perhaps I would like to review their hair treatment and he’d send me an email the next week to confirm the appointment.

Too good to be true? At that time, he didn’t stipulate any terms and conditions to his offer so I sat tight and waited. A week went by with no email from this person so I sent a polite reminder asking whether the offer was still on. He replied that it was his management’s requirement that I send my blog statistics for their consideration so I did so with some foreboding because I suspected from the tone of his email that a rejection was imminent. I can always tell, it’s my 6th sense.

Within 24 hours came this “Dear John” email:-

“First of all, we would like to express our sincere appreciation for your kind support towards (our salon).

After deliberate discussion with my management, we regret to inform you that your offer to have hair services review at our salon is not approved.

It’s been a pleasure getting to know you, and I hope that we cross paths in the future.

Thank you so much.”

The rejection I can deal with without losing any sleep or getting ruffled. The English is something else. Is it really necessary to state “deliberate discussion” and what is a “deliberate discussion” anyway? I presume what this person meant to say is “after discussion and due deliberation” but somehow or other it became “deliberate discussion.” I replied that it was not my intention to have free services at the salon anyway and that I doubted our paths would cross in the future. I mean, let’s be honest about it right? After getting rejected like this, I wouldn’t be likely to patronize this salon even when hell freezes over. Furthermore, with hundreds (if not thousands) of salons in this country, why would I return to one which obviously doesn’t think much of my blog? I also wanted to add that in future rejection emails, this person might not want to use the words “deliberate discussion” because they make as little sense as me even looking at the salon again. If people want to be fancy schmancy with the English language, I say let them be. It’s mind-boggling what liberties people take with the language. For the life of me, I can’t fathom what a deliberate discussion is. Could it be people bumping into each other and deliberately having a discussion? Interesting but I can’t wrap my head around it.

Now excuse me while I go and get some much needed deliberate sleep! Here’s deliberately wishing everyone a wonderful long weekend!