The title of this column may lead many to believe this rant is all about politicians but it is not. You may have encountered it on occasion when you’ve asked someone to quote you a price for a special gage or instrument and received this brief but terminal response. It often appears beside one or two items in a list of many where the purchasing department asks the vendor to fill in the blanks on their form, which leaves little or no room for any explanations or questions.
Reasons for such responses will vary from someone having a bad hair day to your supplier being so loaded up with work he or she can’t handle any more. Or perhaps you have specified something that normally takes four weeks to deliver but you must have this one in one week.