I made a call this morning to complete some finance-related transactions and it was like pulling teeth. It had been a while since I dealt with this company, so I didn’t have all the information they wanted on hand, like the amount of the last transaction or even the home phone number they would have on file.
Both myself and the agent’s tone was growing gradually more frustrated and I made a conscious decision to dial it down a bit because I needed to save my energy for the insurance company! 🙂 Finally, the agent and I made a breakthrough and we got on to the first part of what I wanted to do, change my address. Soon as I gave it, the lady’s demeanour changed completely.
“Wow. That’s a big change!” she exclaimed. “How do you like it?” I replied that I’d wanted to come to the Klondike my whole life, so this was a dream come true. We continued to talk business for a bit and when it was concluded she said “Thank you for your patience and live your dream, young lady!”
I love people like that who show admiration for someone else’s dream instead of putting it down or joking that the person is crazy!
My problem comes when they ask me to spell my mother’s maiden name. When her family got off the boat from Norway at Ellis Island one brother’s name got written down as ending with “son” and the other brother ended up with “sen”. No one could speak English so the rushed immigration people just wrote down whatever they wanted so they ended up with half the family being ___sen and the other half ___son. When my mother was born, her aunt registered her so her name ended up being different than her mother’s! It was all very confusing and I never remember how I spelled it on my credit card and bank account applications. There is something to be said for being named “Smith”.
That’s pretty funny!
My mother’s last name is Côté–coh-tay. Most companies just spell it Cote. I once called a place where they asked me my mother’s maiden name and refused to deal with me because what they had on file was pronounced ‘coat’!