GregHowley.com

Several years back, in the days when I spent a lot of time in Manhattan on business, I chanced to be on a barstool next to a city employee who told to me, in the Sacred Confessional of the Tavern, the following tale of the "Press Button to Cross" buttons mounted on street corner poles.

Seems that when the things were first installed, they worked as advertised. The resulting random occurances of 2 and 4-way red lights messed up the traffic patterns so badly that the City decided to disconnect most of the switches and leave the lights on autopilot. They left the buttons in place, however, and didn't advertise the fact that said buttons are now dummies because the effect of pressing the buttons seemed to be, well, placatory.

True story.

Without saying too much of what I do... One of my functions at my temp job is to send out application request forms to people (Note that I did not say application). I'm able to tell these people over the phone if we are accepting applications from their area. Instead, we let them fill out a request for application first without telling them anything or sending out a real application. The only time I do tell these people we will/won’t accept applications is if they specifically ask. Instead, we have them: Fill out a form, send it in, wait a few weeks, then send an application or denial letter. Because of this, we don't usually get stuck in a ten minute conversation about WHY we’re not accepting applications... so I guess it works.