Letters to People I Hate

Dear calendar lady,

You called the store from your home, some 40 minutes away, to see if we had a calendar. A very specific calendar. You said it was a Michigan calendar with tear-a-way pages. I politely informed you that we did not have anymore desk calendars. You asked if I could check on this one. I said that I knew for sure we had sold out of our desk calendars. You asked for my name. At that moment, I knew this conversation was going to take a while. I shouldn’t have answered the phone.

I gave you my name, three times because you kept talking over me, trying to describe your stupid calendar. It had pictures on one side of the sheet and the days of the month on the other. That’s nice, sounds like a calendar. We don’t have it. Then you started using my name in every sentence. I felt like I was talking to my grade school principal. But no matter how often you said my name in that holier than thou tone, no desk calendars were going to appear.

You asked if I would just look it up in the computer. Unfortunately we don’t have listings in our computer for the calendar and other stationery items. I tried to explain this to you. You asked if I would go look at the calendars to see if this particular one was there. I hated doing that when we had dozens of calendar varieties, wandering among the calendars looking for something a customer is describing over the phone is tedious. But when I know we don’t have one? No way am I looking.

I told you we didn’t have desk calendars, we were all sold out and all we had were wall calendars. You told me it could be a wall calendar, it could be hung on a wall. Lots of things can be hung on a wall, lady. It doesn’t make them wall calendars. I asked if the calendar you wanted was about 12 inches square. You said no, it was smaller. Desk calendar sized, perhaps? I didn’t bother asking.

You said, “Kelly, I just want to see if you have this particular calendar in. If you would go look it would save me a trip. I live almost 40 minutes away and I don’t want to drive out there is you don’t have it, Kelly.” We don’t have it! I’m not telling you we have a similar one and I’m not sure if it’s right. I’m saying no, don’t drive here, don’t waste your time. We don’t have what you want.

I think my irritation showed in my tone, because you upped the usage of my name. Thank goodness I had a co-worker there to roll my eyes at or I might have yelled at you. I repeated our ‘wall calendars only’ status and you said okay. End of story? No. After a pause you said, “So are you going to go look?” Fine. I put you on hold and talked to my co-worker while he looked up a book. I tapped my fingers on the counter and estimated exactly how long I should leave you on hold. I thought about reading a magazine article.

A minute later I picked up. Stifling my irritation for a final showdown I said, “We only have academic planners, Twilight wall calendars, and Eckhart Tolle wall calendars.” You said thank you in a huff and hung up. My co-worker grinned. He thought the Eckhart Tolle was a nice touch. I thought hitting you in the face would be a nice touch, but when I have to deal with people I hate over the phone, I’ll take what I can get.

Sincerely,

Kelly

Dear caller,

You called the store today and as soon as you started talking I hated you. Apparently you had received a phone call from us, but had been unable to reach the phone in time. So you called back. Sounds reasonable, but I know where this is going. You see, every morning our special orders manager calls the customers whose book orders have arrived at the store. And almost every morning/early afternoon people like you call us back.

Our special orders manager leaves a message, something along the lines of, “This message is for Mr. Smith, I’m calling to let you know your book arrived at —- and is available to be picked up.” But you are too busy/inept to listen to messages aren’t you? So you called me. I asked if there was a message left for you and you said yes. I asked if you listened to said message and you said no. Of course not.

You said the phone call might have been in regards to a book you ordered. I said the message would let you know if it had come in. You didn’t want to go that route. You wanted me to tell you if the book had come in or if there were any problems. Unfortunately for me, the books had not yet been brought onto the floor. They were still sitting on the desk of the person who called you and LEFT A MESSAGE!

So I put you on hold and in the process of trying to call the special orders manager, we got disconnected. Oops. I waited for you to call back, but you didn’t. I assume you thought I hung up on you and then you listened to your message telling you your book was in the store and available to be purchased. In retrospect I wish I had hung up on you. Right at the beginning of the conversation. It would have saved us both a lot of time.

Sincerely,

Kelly