Nightmarish

-
Yesterday the me from the first department wrote a lovely letter to the boss of the me in the second department. He called the first me back and said it was a wonderful idea and would the second me write a letter for him to address this issue?

The second me is going to get upset at the first me for making her more work.

That is bad enough, but today a third me showed up!

She was sitting at the reception desk and a man called from Ecuador. He wasn't interested in using his Spanish, he wanted to talk in English and he wanted to speak to the Founder. So she put him through to the Founder's assistant. And then she could hear through the wall "...let me put you through to someone who can speak Spanish..."

Now, all of you gentle readers are very intelligent, and of course you know what this means.

I left the reception desk in the capable control of the woman training me and raced around the corner to my desk, just in time to answer

"Hello, thank you for calling, how may I help you?"

Comments

Matthew Carroll said…
Sounds like you've made yourself indispensable. When do you start collecting three salaries?
5:38 PM
slowlane said…
No three salaries, but we will be accepting birthday presents for each of us.
9:11 PM
Matthew Carroll said…
Two are on their way. If I had known about the third you, I could have gotten you another coconut monkey head.
6:47 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The "No I" Phone

-
Image
It's a cheap party trick: I pull out my phone, flip it open to check the time or send a quick text, and watch for the reactions. In the decades I've owned a flip phone, people have given me a few double takes. Recently, though, when I opened my phone to squint at a photo texted to me, the person sitting across the conference table surprised me with a "Haha! I love your phone!" And I did, too. I loved my flip phone. Then, in a deadly mistake of distracted domesticity, I scooped it up with my bed sheets and dropped it in the washing machine: Eco Cold, extra spin. Oh gentle readers, the tragedy of beautiful T9 predictive text programming drowned at the bottom of the linens spin cycle! Yes, I lost saved phone numbers, the blurry store photos I'd snapped over the years to double check prices when back to internet access, the text threads with details about addresses and meet-ups... all lost. Sad, inconvenient, annoying, frustrating, all of it. But the biggest tragedy, ...
Read more

Amtrak Adventuring

-
Image
Trying to see it all, 2011 I may never look down the aisle of an Amtrak train without remembering a baby bouncing, holding fast to the seat as the train rocked and bounced even faster. All the world over, trains carry a reputation for efficiency and frugality. That has never been my experience with Amtrak.  The Adventure Begins, June 22, 2011 Thirteen years ago (almost to the day) our little family set out on our first Amtrak adventure. We thought three weeks touring the United States on a train with an infant made so much more sense than the alternative. The alternative being flying or driving (with the same infant) to a wedding in the middle of Cornfieldville, Ohio. Being young and foolish, it made perfect sense. Our baby did not yet sleep through the night, so sitting up in coach seating night after night wouldn't affect our sleep all that much. With a rolling ice chest filled with lunch sacks that prevented us from knowing in advance whether our meal was Option A, B, or C, w...
Read more

The Crazy Market

-
There is a place here in Beijing that I (not so) affectionately call The Crazy Market. Imagine four floors of wall to wall shops, one shop selling the same thing that 15 other shops are selling, all displayed with bright colors and lights and each shop having two or three people who call out "Hello! What are you looking for?" "Hello! We give you good price!" "Hello! How many coats you want buy?" "Hello! We have your size shoe!" (This one makes me want to stop and say "Oh, I greatly doubt it.") "Hello! Nice pearls for you!" If you so much as look at an item, it is immediately assumed that you will buy it and so they call out "What is your highest price? We give you good discount." The only exception to this is the very bottom floor that is filled with every imaginable and unimagineable sea creature and various sea creature parts in various stages of life. This serves as a good aroma which frequently makes its way up t...
Read more