The mail I get

I received this unsolicited email this morning:

Dear Sales Manager,
I would like to know if your company offers Crane Stops for sale. I would also like to know if payment terms using credit card is acceptable and also would  like to be informed about the possibility of making pick-ups at your location. These items are urgently needed, so i will be waiting for your quick response. Thank you.

Yours sincerely,
George Richardson

Geez. Until I just Googled “crane stop,” I had never heard the term! I found a company that sells them. On its website it states: “When the trolley rides as smoothly as possible across the bridge, and the bridge along the runways, you’ll enjoy more productive, dependable service from your overhead crane.” It continues that “[the] bumpers [are] designed to effectively absorb the damaging energy of impacts to promote safe, efficient operation and minimize equipment stress.”

Where did George Richardson (a phony name, I’m sure) get my email address? I get emails like this all the time: someone wants to buy something from me, or sell me something I have never even heard of before.

* * *

MANY YEARS AGO, I wrote about touring a marshmallow factory. Shortly thereafter, when anyone searched the word “marshmallow” on Google, my story came up on the front page. I guess my email address for that story ended up on a list. For years after that I received at least one or two inquires a month from people wanting to buy my marshmallows.

. . . Oh, then there is MY SPAM FOLDER, where, should I be lonely, there is always someone willing to comfort me. The latest is a person named Bree. She (I assume it’s a “she”) writes me twice a day, informing me “I want to come over tonight.” So far, Bree has written to me at least 100 times. It’s probably some Russian guy in an Internet cafe in Moscow.