pests

a PEST analysis of people who should be banned from Earth:

(PEST, in the context of business strategy, refers to Political, Economic, Social and Technological factors. The acronym happens to be quite fitting of the topic!)

on Political factors:

- George W. Bush

on Economic factors:

- telemarketers who tell you they will only take 2 minutes of your time. [this results in misallocation of scarce resources (i.e. time)!]
- an extension of the above - telemarketers who call your home, find out that you're not in, and then coerce the poor person at home to giving away your mobile number by saying that they are your "friend".
- direct-selling salesmen who tell you they will only take 2 minutes of your time..
- come to think of it, any unsolicited salesperson (with apologies to all you irritating sales people).

on Social factors:

- it used to be people who asked when i would get married. it's somehow evolved to people who ask when i will convert the empty room in the house into a nursery. and by the way, i'm not even married yet.

on Technological factors:

- people who forward you a ludicrous virus warning (you know, the stuff that wipes out your entire C drive, deletes all dll files, the existence of which is confirmed by IBM, AOL, Intel, Netscape and Microsoft) and when gently told it's a hoax, indignantly reply "sure, that's what they say, but there is no harm in distributing these warnings - you NEVER know! better safe than sorry! prevention is better than cure!"
- people who forward you an email with six pages of old email headers and the long-awaited actual e-mail content reads "this is a good luck charm... "
- people (of any age) who refuse to touch a PC [if my once PC-illiterate retiree dad can now check stock quotes online and engage in online discussions with automobile interest groups, YOU have no excuse! ;-) ]
- the people who, when told "Help, MyDoom has infected this PC", reply, "Your what?" [i know i've repeated this too many times.. i guess i still haven't gotten over it ... :-D]