A lengthy problem

This one is old. And I mean 'before I met Julie' old.

I used to work in a warehouse that stocked and supplied electronic components. It was a pretty big warehouse, and at the time this took place, I was a shift team leader in the goods in department.

As anyone who has ordered multiple items at a single time knows, what you ordered isn't necessarily what you receive. One supplier even threatened to take us to court because we were refusing to pay for items we hadn't received - but they were adamant they had shipped. And then they found said items in a dark corner of their own warehouse. And two suppliers seemed to think it would be a jolly good wheeze to throw a load of components into a box with polystyrene chips (a fantastic idea, courtesy of static electricity), and then leave us to guess what each item may be.

It didn't help that the term MICROelectronics was often a very salient term to describe the parts. While some items had the device code printed on them somewhere, others were too small to fit the entire code, no matter how small the print.

As team leader, it fell to me to contact the sales department in question and ask them to iron out any problems. Cue this conversation (and yes, Mary was Irish)...

All around me, people were either laughing or demanding to know what the laughter was about. All I could think of was that I had just well and truly scuppered my chances of asking Mary out...

The gall of the woman...

A few months ago, my mum visited one of her sisters, partly just to drop by, but also partly because of health issues. Last year wasn't a good one for our family when it came to health, what with one thing and another. Compared to a lot of the family, I am fairly distant, both physically and emotionally, so it was during a phone conversation with my mother a few days later that this came to light for me.

For British people in general and our family in particular (as a running joke), the weather is a strong topic for discussion. Therefore, most conversation openings between me and Mum will run along the lines of greeting, weather, health.

"Hi, Mum, what's the weather like up by you? How're you feeling today?"

Scintillating stuff, I know.

Now, I don't know about you, but I find that when you have chats with people you know very well and have done for a long time, you tend to develop a sort of conversational shorthand. You will also take verbal shortcuts which will baffle outsiders, yet will be patently clear to anyone in the know.
However, there is a subtle danger here.
If either or both of the people in the conversation are feeling a little tired or are being distracted by something or other, then even long-established cues may be missed and confusion will reign.
Take, for example, this snippet from my mother as she tells me of her visit to her sister.

Now, if you did the same as me, you read straight through that without blinking and then thought, "hang on a minute..."
Of course, my aunt wasn't suffering from a meteorological disorder, it was just that I had heard two separate elements of the conversation as one sentence. As it turned out, Jackie was only in for a check-up - she wasn't about to have a weather vane installed...

Julie vs the telesales people (part II)

We posted a Gem a short while ago about what happened when Julie received a call from a telesales person (click here to see the confusion). After that, we were talking about other ways we could baffle the buggers...
This hasn't happened, but we wish it would. We're just waiting for the right time.

John, Ringo, George and Pun.

On one of our many trips out, we were sat in a cafe, supping tea and discussing various letter-themed tunes that we could install on our mobile phones - just to use for an alert for any incoming text messages. I know; sad, isn't it? The usual suspects turned up pretty quickly - The Proclaimers' "Letter From America" and The Carpenters' "Please Mr. Postman".
It didn't take long before we fell quiet, having run out of obvious choices, but then Julie threw something in that was so left-field it was positively trippy.

"Oh dear," I thought, "It's going to be like that is it?"

Spike, the lazy lovefool

It was a bit quiet at work today. Well, I say that, but I was was boxing posters for more than half the day. Yeah, thrilling, or what? At one point (don't ask me when, the day was all a blur), I decided to send my wife to tell her those three little words - with a small twist of humour.

Julie, however, was definitely on the ball.

Yes ma'am!
So much for romance! To be fair to Julie, though, she did soften the blow with a final 'lol!'.

Julie vs the telesales people.

You know them. The people who call at awkward times, initially claiming they don't want any money from you - but that they have a fantastic opportunity for you if you just sign away your souls...
Bugger off, will you? I've only just walked through the door. What I want is a nice hot cup of tea and a comfy chair with a little light music to help me out of my workplace-induced foul mood. What I've apparently got is you. Bugger off, will you?

If this is familiar to you, then today's Gem should warm the heart quite nicely. Like the example above, Julie had not long walked through the front door yesterday when the phone rang. She picked it up and said, "Hello?" only to hear a busy silence in return. This, as we know very well, is the sure sign of an unwelcome call-centre. Sure enough, there was a hurried clatter, and Julie was hailed by the unwelcome sound of an American telesales woman, keen on earning her bonus. Sorry dear, but you're not getting any bonuses from this house. In fact, all you're getting from Julie is a delightfully off-the-wall Gem to confuse the bejaysus out of you.

Let me clarify something here; right Julie's reply, there was a brief moment of wordless confusion. Followed by the click-burrrr as the freshly baffled telesales woman ended the call.
I don't know about anyone else, but I reckon we should get Julie to run for some parliamentary position, if not make her President-for-life of the whole world.

Barking mad about cables

Well, about something, anyway. I'm not sure what, though - and neither are the two people in today's Gem.

I've lifted this wholesale from notalwaysright.com; this site, if you're unfamiliar with it, has content entirely provided from people who work in shops or are on the other end of the line in customer service positions. You see, as they know far too well, the adage "The customer is always right" does not hold true. Very frequently, the customer is a complete idiot or an abusive ass, or possibly both at the same time.
There is, of course, a third category, one that seems to be populated by people who only appear to have, at best, a nodding acquaintance with reality. Like the guy below who called the support line for a cable company.

I have no idea what the caller was taking for his ills, but I would like some please. He seemed to be happy enough in his own little world...