Back in my single days, I learned a variety of ways to avoid giving out my phone number to guys who just didn’t know how to take a hint. My girlfriends and I actually made a game of it by seeing who could top each other by being devious without causing actual offense.
My friend Jill, undeniably the nicest among us, was initially appalled with our deceptiveness. “Just be honest,” she scolded us. Then one night while we were out clubbing, a man who’d been eyeing her for nearly an hour sent a round of drinks to our table. When he stumbled up to us five minutes later and asked for her number, Jill politely explained that she didn’t like to give it out to men she’d just met. He shrugged, nodded, and stumbled off. “See,” Jill said, “Honesty is the best policy.” Three months, twenty-seven “love notes” left on her doorstep, four slashed tires, two frantic calls to 911 and one restraining order later, Jill changed her opinion and joined in our “game.”
Ok, I’ll confess that sometimes I’d just dash off the name and phone number of whatever woman had stolen away my last boyfriend, then make a mental note that my girlfriends and I needed to find a different club for the next month or two. But my usual method of handling such requests, the old “My phone was shut off because I forgot to pay the bill” excuse, worked well enough in my college days because it was perfectly believable coming from a struggling student. Of course, there was always an occasional pest who still wasn’t deterred and asked for my address instead. (These requests inevitably prompted the now-wiser Jill to reach into her purse and announce “I’ve got mace!!!”)
Of course, that was before technology became so integral to our lives. Now, there’s rejection by cell phone or land line, or by business card. The latest entrant to the apparently burgeoning “technorejection business” is rejection by email.
Attention, ladies: If that guy hitting on you just won’t quit until you surrender your e-mail address, feel free to call upon Paper Napkin.
Billed as an e-mail rejection service, Paper Napkin will tell your persistent suitor to buzz off when he comes calling electronically.
Here’s how it works: Give out any e-mail address with “PaperNapkin.net” after the “at” sign. You don’t need to register the address ahead of time. When your suitor tries to contact you for a date, he’ll instead receive a form letter stating in part, “Maybe you’re just out of your league here.”
Josh Santangelo, a Web developer in Seattle, said he got the idea over lunch last week after a discussion on dating turned to the New York Rejection Line — a phone number women can give out to reach a generic recording of rejection. He thought there ought to be something similar for e-mail, and he wrote the code for it that afternoon.
Sheesh. You know that society is becoming too de-personalized when we’re now paying for technology to do what good friends used to do for free.
Tuesday, August 24th, 2004, 10:07 am | 
Technology Bites | 
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August 24, 2004 at 5:14 pm
There’s always “Sorry, not interested.” It worked against me, anyway. What women should do is ask for the men’s numbers. If a man won’t give it up, he’s not likely to be worth pursuit.
Of course, then women would have to call, and many of them don’t want to be seen as “aggressive” by their fellow women. Pity. We men have never been put off by aggressive women, except when they’re ugly.
But I have to say what I say to my daughter: if you aren’t ready and able to say no, you aren’t ready to date. And if you are out to please, you’ll get screwed (figuratively speaking, usually).
This cowardly service is just another example of just how much women want to please us men, and the ridiculous hoops they’ll make us jump through to get them to admit that they aren’t interested. Such stupid games are the raison d’etre of thirty-plus-year-old single women with their need to blame others for their state. But that’s another story.