Archive for October, 2006
Caller: “What is this Immigration Form? Do we have to fill it out?”
Me: “Yes, ma’am. The-”
Caller: “But we’re United States citizens! We’re not immigrants!”
Me: “I understand that, ma’am; everyone, regardless of their citizenship status, has to fill out that form. It’s not just immigrants.”
Caller: “Oh. Okay.”
Caller: “I’m calling because my clients are waitlisted for a hotel in Santiago. Has anything happened with that, yet?”
Me: “Hmm. No, it doesn’t look like it has. Of course, it looks like your clients are still about 200 days from traveling, so…”
Caller: “Yeah, well, they’re getting antsy. And it’s not like they wanna be there for a week; they just need a place to stay until time for their trip. They’re getting into the city at like four in the morning; they just need a place to stay for a while.”
Me: “That makes sense. Well-”
Caller: “It’s not like they wanna be there for a week; they just need a place to stay until time for their trip. They’re getting into the city at like four in the morning; they just need a place to stay for a few hours.”
Me: “Yes, sir. I understand. I-”
Caller: “It’s not like they wanna be there for a week; they just need a place to stay until time for their trip. They’re getting into the city at like four in the morning; they just need a place to stay for a while.”
Me: “Here, let me transfer you to that department!” (I’m not supposed to do that, but he was driving me crazy. I just hope he didn’t mention my name…)
Me: “[SOmething about sitting on a verandah, watching the world go by]”
Brett: “Did you just say that a verandah is a place where you can wallow in sin?”
Me, to my phone as it rings before I can answer: “Aawww, I wanna talk to Brett about wallowing in sin!”
Caller: “There’s some new Playstation thing that’s coming out that costs $300,000.”
Me: “Hm. I hadn’t heard that… I’d heard it was going to cost _six hundred_ dollars…”
Caller: “Yeah, there was a thing in the paper about it. YOu have to buy the base unit, and then you have to have some fancy kinda TV to play it on and the sound system and a whole bunch of other stuff…”
Me: “Oh, okay. So, about these brochures that you want…”
Brett: “What do bathtubs have to do with telecommuting?”
Me: “Nothing! I needed something to write on and that piece of paper was handy.”
Caller: “[Rambling on about air flight schedules and fees and how stupid it is to change an air gateway from Boise, Idaho to Salt Lake City, Utah, particularly since Boise has a freakin' international airport.]”
Me: “I agree, that is stupid. What is it that you are asking for, here? To have the air fees waived, or…?”
Caller: “Yes! I want the fees taken off!”
Me: “Ooookay! That’s a different department. Lemme transfer you.”
Me: “What’s your reference number?”
Caller: “[Number].”
Me, looking at a different booking altogether: “Hm. Okay, lemme read this back to you… Was that T as in Top or-”
Caller, in a rather condescending tone: “_P_, as in Peter.”
Me: “Thank you, just a moment… Bah. The last letter, was that-”
Caller: “[Reference number, with the letters carefully enunciated and given to me with examples], for Doctor and Mrs [lastname].” (And boy did he let me know that _he_ was a _DOCTOR_ and I was hopelessly stupid… I did get the last snicker, though, because he’d gone through a travel agent and so I couldn’t do anything for him. Or tell him anything. Ha.)
Me: “Oops. I just managed to cross-reference Cindy with a bunch of people with very Japanese-sounding last names.”
Caller: “Oh, that’s not right…”
Me: “No, no it’s not. Let me fix that.” (It turned out that the lady couldn’t be cross-reffed after all, because she and the people she wanted to be xrfd with were on two different trips, even though they were all traveling on the same vehicle at the same time. Bah.)
Caller: “I just need to cancel this booking.”
Me: “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. May I ask why? I don’t need a super-specific reason or gory details, and if you’d rather not say, that’s fine.”
Caller: “Oh, well, the husband died.”
Me: “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that.”
Caller: “Yeah. But at least he died while he was traveling, so he went doing something he enjoyed…”
Caller: “I need to cancel this booking.”
Me: “I’m sorry to hear that. Any particular reason?”
Caller: “They just decided to go to a resort, because it’s a little closer to home.”
Me: “Oh, good. I mean, it’s not good for my company, obviously, but I’m glad that it’s nothing serious.”
Caller: “Oh, me too!”
Caller: “I’m sorry I’m asking so many stupid questions, it’s just that I’ve never done this before…”
Me: “Oh, no, you’re fine. To me, a stupid question is one that you’re asking because you can and because you know it’ll be annoying, so, y’know.”
Caller: [laughs] “I like your sense of humor! Okay, one more question…”
Posted in 
So Holland America Line is one of the companies that I work with on a daily basis. They’re a good cruise line with decent products, but sometimes I wonder…. Especially when I come across something like this: http://go.family.org/focuscruise/ (no link because it’s for “focus on the family”, the craptacular “ministry” run by james dobson*).
* It’s not capitalized on purpose. I don’t respect him enough to bother.
Yes, I am still alive.
No, I don’t really have much more to say than that… I have been thinking about NaNoWriMo, though. Maybe I’ll start on it early this year.
Fuzzy stuff, Goo(ey) Stuff!
Okay, not _really_. At least not the last two, anyhow.
In an effort to get my Beretta back from the Anchorage Police Department (ultra-short version/advice: NEVER tell a towing company employee that there is a weapon in the car that they have in their storage yard, because they will call the cops and then the cops will come take said weapon into custody.), my mother took Sven in to have the guys at Clueless do a data-transfer from hard-drive to CD.
I feel really bad for those guys — apparently, they had a manager who in his brief stint with Clueless managed to throw out all of their old Mac gear, so they could no longer work on old Macs. Guh.
Anyhow, they were able to jury-rig a way to get the stuff on Sven’s hard-drive from there onto _one_ CD (because the HD’s only 700 megs, after all…), and she has it in her hot little hands. When/if she finds what she needs on there (a picture of my Beretta, which I scanned ages ago), I’ll have her mail it to me… I am hopeful that it will have all kinds of goodies on it, but mostly and particularly I’m looking forward to the text files…
I wish I’d asked her to take Fiach in, too, but maybe I’ll just have her send it to me and then take it up to Seattle Laptop instead. *Wants to reread and maybe work on The Boys Who Followed The Sun*