Anything For A Sale....

So as I'm taking a brief pause from churning through my paperwork laiden day to blog, I'm also waiting to meet with an account manager from a local consulting firm.
For those of you not familiar with what consulting firms do, allow me to break it down. When a company needs someone for a job opening, say an accountant, they have two choices. Either put out an ad themselves, root through many resumes, conduct interviews, and a select a job applicant. Orrrrr, they can go through a consulting agency which does all the filtering and reviewing for you. Essentially, you tell them you need "x, y, and z" and they send you resumes containing x, y, and z. Then after you agree to contract an applicant through them, they charge you rediculous amounts of money to have this individual work for you. Typically, if we hire someone one who we're paying the agency $40 an hour for, the individual usually only sees about $23 of that $40 per hour.
In an attempt to drum up loyality to their organization, and to look sincere in reaping all they can from you personnel needs, they typically try to organize a meeting with HR once every 4-6 months to "drop in and see how business is doing". This translates to they're going to bombard you with free crap (I have literally a small pile of logo'd coffee cups & candy behind me), their business card, and an attempt to make you feel like they share your "dreamy vision of business growth and success".
Far be it from me to turn down free stuff, or even chat with someone to break the monotony of work sometimes. But the thing that irks me about meeting with them is usually after the small talk has subsided, it gets really awkward because there's not much to talk about once you state you need (or might need employees) and they confirm that indeed they are willing to offer employees.
Despite my desire to, I have yet to end a discussion with a consultant rep with "well, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go drum up some business for you and fire a few people."