Silence is an equal opportunity employer

Modern technology is an amazing thing, right.  Just think, many of us can simply reach into our pockets, take out a phone, and call someone anywhere in the world…even if they don’t want to be called.

I seemed to get called when not wanting to be called when I am either at home or at work: my home/office phone rings, and being Pavlovianly trained to pick it up and answer, I do so. Many times - - far, far too many times - - there is apparently no one there, because no one responds after I say “Hello.”

But it seems I am wrong. (Well, I have been wrong maybe four or five times in my life!)  Often someone is there, or perhaps more accurately, someone is monitoring their telephone marketing software program, waiting to see if an actual human picks up the phone before they bother to flip whatever button they have to flip to actually talk to me.  After all, they don’t want to waste their precious time listening to a phone ring and ring and maybe never be answered, so they wait for some system to inform them . . . after several seconds . . . that a real human has answered the phone, is on the line and is waiting to learn all about the piece of crap they are trying to sell me.

What I do, after answering a phone and holding it to my ear for what seems like an interminable number of seconds, when the person finally sells “Hello,” or often calls me by my first name, is repay the favor: I don’t say anything, and, without disconnecting the line/call, simply put the phone down and walk away, letting the caller waste his/her time listening to nothing and waiting for someone to talk with them. 

 

I suppose I should be a better human being than the caller, and not be so terribly upset that a telemarketer does this.  But if you are calling me to tell me something or sell me something, I think the least thing you could do is have the decency to be there when I answer the phone, say hello and begin to pitch your product before I say, “I am not interested.” If you are calling me to tell/sell me something and you think it is fine to inconvenience me further because you are not ready to say hello as soon as I answer the phone, then you can waste your time and listen to the same nothing I had to listen to when you interrupted my day...mainly, nothing at all.

Yes, there are times, when silence is golden, but when you interrupt my day to impose your silence on me, I shall do the same to you because silence is an equal opportunity employer.

Pete does very, very well....literally

Pete Davis is an amazing guy. Not only does he successfully operate his own business, the Dundee Manufacturing Company in Southeast Michigan, and raise scholarship money for University of Toledo College of Business and Innovation students, he devotes his time and energy to direct another organization, Hope2Water. He started Hope2Water to save lives by delivering safe and healthy drinking water to children, families, and communities through philanthropy, advocacy, outreach, and custom water solutions to the people in Haiti.

Not long ago his organization achieved the milestone of drilling their first two water wells in Dessalines, Haiti. Davis said, “I was given the opportunity to go to Dessalines, Haiti, on my first mission there to help at an eyecare clinic.  It was shortly after the earthquake and when we arrived for our mission there were a million people living in tents right near the airport. Most of the nine million people in Haiti don’t have opportunity, and there are no jobs”.

“On the three-hour bus ride to the clinic, we were going over a bridge and I saw people pulling pails of water from the creek, the same creek in which other people were washing their clothes. I saw the pollution, and learned there are an enormous amount of deaths due to water-borne disease. I became friends with the chaplin at the hospital in Dessalines and asked him about the water conditions, and he said that five to ten people die each year in his village alone due to the bad water. These were not only people in his village but also his family members”.

“That touched me.”

Davis said his next step was to set up a non-profit organization to be able to raise money to carry out his vision of getting safe and clean drinking water to the people of Haiti. He contacted an organization that was already familiar with drilling wells in Haiti and flew to Texas to meet with Healing Hands International to drill the wells needed in Dessalines.

“They told me it cost $6,000 to drill a well. I didn’t know if I could raise that much money, but I did know that I had to drill two wells in Dessalines, community wells for everyone to get water,” he recalled. “So I said, let’s move forward and do it. I planned to pay for it myself if I could not raise the money, but in six weeks we pulled together a golf outing in Michigan which raised $12,000.”

Davis later returned to Haiti to again help at the eyecare clinic.  “While we were there we drilled our first well; we hit water at 45 feet down, and it produced 35 gallons of water a minute. We then drilled the second well, hitting water at 90 feet.   We capped them, poured the foundation and installed the pumps. We were now able to give water via a hand pump to 1,500 to 2,000 people a day per well!”

“We have identified a pump built here in the United States called Life Pump and have teamed up with Design Outreach out of Columbus, Ohio to purchase and have the pumps installed in Dessalines, Haiti," Davis said. 

"We have raised enough monies to do 2 to 3 pump repairs in Dessalines by the end of 2018."

"For 2019, we are going to complete an additional 10 pump repairs in Dessalines at a cost of $100,000."

 

“It’s just such a basic need, a common thread for everyone on this planet.”

“In the United States we have a tendency to get inpatient, that things don’t happen when they should,” Davis reflected. “But I kept giving it to God knowing he would make it happen; it does test your belief system.”

“I’m good with goals. I want to be able to look someone in the eye and know I did it for them.”

Like I said, an amazing guy!