The Invitation

A special invitation

When was the last time you received an invite somewhere? Was it an invitation to a holiday party, birthday party, maybe even a wedding? I recently received an unexpected invitation.

I studied the outer envelope wondering who had an even coming up. As I opened the envelope and read the contents, a smile crossed my face. It was an invitation to some kind of hearing screening.

My first thought was, did my kids sign me up for this? They’re always saying I can’t hear. This invite almost topped the one I received a couple of years ago asking me to join AARP(American Association of Retired Persons) . I’m not near retirement age yet, nor am I near, 50 years (not THAT close), yet I got the invite.

I chalk my “invitation” experience up to a great marketing team. The people at AARP and the hearing clinic were just working their marketing strategy. However, I’m not ready to take advantage of either of those opportunities just yet.

That surprise invitation I received started me thinking…how do people handle other types of unwanted invitations? Maybe you have received an invitation from someone on Facebook, LinkedIn or other social media whom you don’t know or don’t know too well. Do you accept the invite, respond to it, or just plain ignore it?

I came across an article titled LinnkedIn:Dealing with the unwanted invitation. It gave good reasons why people should not become an “invitation spammer” sending invitations to any and everyone. The article also gave suggestions on how to respond when someone asks you to endorse them.

If you’re not comfortable endorsing the person you could say, “We haven’t worked closely enough or for a long enough time for me to endorse you.” If you don’t know the person at all, etiquette dictates that it is ok to just ignore the request.

So, have you ever received an invitation that you had no interest in taking advantage of? What did you do?