LinkedIn is going to be the death of me.
Day after day, the online networking site delivers invitations from people I have never heard of, much less interacted with in any meaningful way.
The other day I received an offer to cozy up to someone named Diana Pollard, who is identified as a “holistic health coach” and “master stylist” who lives in Titusville, Fla.
As far as I know, I have never set foot in Titusville, Fla. I’m pretty sure I would remember, given the ripe possibilities for abusing the town’s name.
I don’t believe I encountered this woman in college, either, given that she graduated from the Institute of Integrative Nutrition.
Nor am I in the market for a holistic health coach.
Not that I couldn’t use one, perhaps. But, as in most families, when the budget gets tight, the holistic health coach seems like a reasonable place to start cutting back.
These invitations arrive so often that I almost look forward to the emails from the Nigerian billionaires seeking my kind assistance.
None of my LinkedIn links is doing me any good whatsoever. I’m not job hunting. I’m not trying to network, either, because I can’t even remember the names and faces of people I already know.
In the past couple of weeks, I have been asked to link to:
• A civil engineer in Venice, Italy.
• A guy who works in the city administration in West Jordan, Utah.
• An area PR woman whom I last quoted in a story in 1990.
At this point, I can’t even remember why I agreed to sign up for LinkedIn those many years ago. I’d quit, but that doesn’t seem possible.
Apparently, quitting LinkedIn is like trying to quit the Mafia.
One of the people I’m linked into told me he tried to escape by “deactivating” his account, but he continues to get invitations.
That person, Akron Public Schools spokesman Mark Williamson, says the website has put him into “indentured server-tude.”
Parting shot
The Columbus Dispatch recently carried an obituary that will strike a chord with any Cleveland sports fan.
The obit said the deceased man “respectfully requests six Cleveland Browns pallbearers so the Browns can let him down one last time.”
Bad manners
A recent police report said a golfer at Prestwick Country Club in Green got into a quarrel with a 59-year-old man who eventually pulled a gun from a golf bag and pointed it at him.
The man was charged with a two-stroke penalty.
Oxymoronic
Bill Ellis was amused by a sign he saw at a McDonald’s on East Waterloo Road in Akron: “Drive-thru Parking.”
Doesn’t bode well for the concept of “fast food.”
Beaten to death
A reader left a voicemail last week urging me to write a column saying we should not be spending millions of dollars on sound walls.
I just checked: During the last 19 years, I have written 44 columns to that effect. Does she really think a 45th column would push that view over the top?
Barbie bust
That’ll teach ’em.
• July 10: About 75 people come to downtown Barberton, toting more than 150 Barbie dolls, for a rally urging Mattel to relocate Barbie to Barberton. (The toy company had announced it is moving Barbie from her longtime home in Malibu to an American city to be determined.)
• July 12: I send Mattel’s publicist, Jamie Haley, an Internet link to our coverage of the Barberton event — a column, seven photos and a video — and ask her to comment on Barberton’s chances. She can’t be bothered.
• Wednesday: Bloomberg News distributes a story saying Mattel has suffered a huge decline in its stock price — 5.6 percent in a single day — thanks in part to “declining interest” in “the aging Barbie doll line.”
Coincidence? We think not.
Bob Dyer can be reached at 330-996-3580 or bdyer@thebeaconjournal.com.