Powers of Persuasion

A couple weeks ago, I was having lunch with the regular crew whom I'm not supposed to have lunch with. The person who delivers our coffee supplies came in, and we started talking about the flavored creamer. We have two kinds, you see, French Vanilla and hazelnut. When we saw the delivery gent walk in, one of the girls said, "Oh good, now I can have vanilla instead of that awful hazelnut." For the most part, vanilla is the preferred flavor among most of my coworkers, and hazelnut gets used only when there is no vanilla. You can imagine that we run out of vanilla quickly, while the hazelnut lingers. Yes, there is a point here.

So, while we were talking about the lack of hazelnut-likers in the company, we started talking about the other flavors that we know are available. I mentioned that the box says Irish Cream is available, and that it would be nice if he could take the hazelnut away and give us that. Bear in mind, we are out having lunch, and the delivery person is not even in our sight, let alone earshot. When lunch was over, and we scrambled to the kitchen to have some yummy vanilla coffee, what did we find? Yep, all the unopened boxes of hazelnut were gone and in their place, pretty green Irish Cream boxes! I'm good!

That's not all. The Washington Nationals were playing in Texas last Monday. They had gone into extra innings and brought in a pinch hitter, Marlin Byrd. The announcers were talking about Byrd's record last year, how many hits/rbi's/homers/etc. They mentioned his home run record, and just as the pitcher was pitching, I cheerfully said, "He can do one of those right now if he wants to!" Lo and behold! It's going back and back and the center fielder is running for it, and it's gone! I gave them a home run!

So, I have persuasive power over coffee and baseball. Hmm... My office pool will have the winning numbers for tonight's $265 Million jackpot!

Did it work?