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Veronica: In Volume 14, Hubman and I talked about the importance of writing a good introductory email.  After all, the email is supposed to help start the dialog and get you to the personal meeting.  Obviously the people who sent us any of the emails below did not take advantage of that post.

Here’s a good one. What are we supposed to do with this? They say hello in the subject and that’s it. Is it too difficult to say something beyond hello?

But in the grand scheme of things, that one is pretty benign.  We get a number of these- they seem nice and polite but there really isn’t any indication that they’d like to hear back from us.

Here’s a good one.  They clearly didn’t read our profile, since while we might be interested, Providence is an hour away and we clearly state in our profile that we have young kids and need a day or two notice to arrange a sitter.  Contacting us at 5pm on a Saturday isn’t going to get a reply.  But I look at the profile anyway and it gets better- it’s a single guy masquerading as a couple,  in order to work around the “block single males” option that we selected.  Nice try pal.

Then there is the couple that inspired Veronica to say “we ain’t no “holla back” couple”!

And they’re persistent, they contacted us again the next day!

But you know, all of those are just examples of different styles of contacting people.  Maybe for other people e-mails like that would earn a response, but they don’t appeal to us.

Veronica:  Now if any of these couples had been smokin’ hot, we might have made allowances for their lack of literacy, because we are a little shallow.  But in all honesty, it really frustrates me when people do not send a decent email.  I am not saying you have to write a novel, but something simple with a note about what in our profile caught your attention, something about yourself that might not be on your profile or a recap of something on  your profile that is very important to you and most important, a CLEAR request for us to contact you is all we ask.  As an HR professional, I shudder to think what  a resume or cover letter from these people would look like since they don’t seem to have the first idea about selling themselves. Every communication method you use is your marketing and branding tool.  Figure out who you are and what you want before you go willy-nilly all over the internet.

On the other hand, this last message just offends me. Can you guess why?

Never mind that swinging is largely about attraction, physical attraction being very important.  The reason for their comment was that Veronica and I had given them access to our private picture gallery, which includes face pictures, and we had asked them to reciprocate.  Am I wrong to think that they are somehow insinuating that others don’t have respected roles in the community? And even if we didn’t, what the fuck should that matter or not?  We’re done with them.

Veronica: This is annoying.  I can understand that you don’t want a face picture out there in public.  But once you are trying to set up a meeting with people, and they have sent you a face picture, it is time to put up.  Hubman and I have had one date where we did not see face pictures first.  The code phrase was introduced before the menus even came  out.   I guess Hubman and I will have to stick to disreputable bums like us.

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Has anyone suggested an idea for Swing Shift that we haven’t covered? I feel like I’ve lost track of suggestions.   As always, comments and questions are welcome, as are stories about your own experiences, so don’t be shy, because I’m a comment whore!