Monday, April 20, 1998

Phone manners

Your April 2 article in regard to rude telephone manners certainly hit home.

At my age and stage of life, I no longer have the patience for such peevish triteness, which is a thorn in the side.

There is no reason to get angry, uptight or irritated. Just write a polite (eloquent) letter to the owner, manager or personnel director and mention this problem starts at the reception point with your first, or any, telephone contact.

Accompany any correspondence with the company's plastic charge card severed in half via your trusted scissors. I have followed this procedure 22 times, with great success. I need no one's credit/charge accounts.

Will businesses ever learn that their firm's picture starts at the front desk with the telephone and/or receptionist? Three words will solve it all: pronunciation, articulate, enunciate. And leave your gum-chewing, nail polishing, etc., until after 5 o'clock!

You do not need me, and I definitely do not need you.

Cash flow - the only way to go. Take it or leave it.

DELAS REEVES

Abilene

Washington logic

For the past few years it seems half the people in Washington were busy investigating the other half. To me this was a good thing. I figured if they all stayed busy there, they wouldn't have time to bother us out here. But, alas, I was wrong. Through it all they still have time to propose stupid laws.

Take the proposed new tax on cigarettes, for example. President Clinton says the $1.10 per pack tax will raise some $30 billion a year, which, he said, he would spend on education. Sounds good so far. But in the same breath he tells us the new tax is designed to make cigarettes so costly that people will stop buying them.

Now let me see if I understand this little bit of logic. If there is a new $1.10 per pack tax on cigarettes and no one buys that pack, then no one is actually paying the tax, are they? So where then is the $30 billion in new funds coming from?

Maybe only politicians can understand this sort of logic. I think we need a few more investigations going on in Washington. Those people there still have too much time on their hands.

STERLING TUCKER

Clyde

Freeway secondary

I agree with a letter printed on April 8. Abilene does not need the funds to expand a two-mile stretch of Winters Freeway. There are many more important projects that this area needs the funding for.

Congressman Stenholm is responsible for putting that extra money for the project into the highway bill. Now the money that would have gone for other more important projects (like agriculture research or walkways for the freeway) will have to go toward expanding the freeway.

I guess he has been in Washington for so long that he doesn't remember what projects are really important to the people of the 17th District.

RONALD ASHMORE

Abilene