Monday, March 07, 2011

BASHOF Event Is Tonight; I Won't Be There

Ok. A friend calls me and says that they're attending the Bay Area Sports Hall Of Fame Dinner BASHOF and that I should cover it as media. My friend is always looking out for new opportunities for Zennie62Media.com, and that's much appreciated.  It would be nice to have some video interviews from BASHOF, I thought.

So, on the encouragement of my friend, I sent an email to two people: Tom Martz the BASHOF President and his PR person, who was nice enough to get back to me about the press conference. So I planned to go over at 4 PM for the press conference. I didn't expect dinner, otherwise I guess she would have said so. But then, not having attended a BASHOF before, I didn't know.

So then I get this call out-of-the-blue from Martz. And since I didn't expect the call I asked who it was and instead of saying who he was Tom says "Who I am? Who are you? You contacted me!"

Since I had not called anyone at that number, I was confused. Then he said "It's Tom from BASHOF. We have NO SEATS AT THE DINNER." Dude was yelling at me!

Yeah.  Yelling.

So I calmly explained that I emailed to cover the event as press. Tom said the press conference was at 4; I said yeah, that's where I'm going to be.

But then he ranted again, "But there's NO SEATING AT THE DINNER. Why don't you check back with us NEXT YEAR earlier!

I don't like circuitous conversation and I sure as hell don't like being yelled at for nothing. I'm not some kid, and if so, that would be child abuse anyway. So I told him to stop being nasty. Tom said "I wasn't being nasty," and hangs up on me.

So, I sent an email stating that I wasn't coming. I'm happy BASHOF has so much press that Tom feels it's just fine to be mean to me. But it's not. I don't care who the person is, I will not put up with disrespectful treatment for one second. I don't treat people that way, so I'm not going to tolerate it when I'm treated that way.  Same goes for anyone who talks to a friend of mine in a disrespectful way in my presence. Don't do it.

And my constant message is that you can't just treat people any kind of way you want in a New Media environment.  You have to be nice.

If I were a name Tom knew, you know damn well he'd not have talked to me like that. Well, now he does know my name, but it's too late. The damage is done.

Good luck tonight BASHOF. I won't be there.  I'm not giving good media content to someone who talks to me like that for no reason at all, then won't apologize to me.

Forget it.  

No comments:

Post a Comment