this one's different because it's us

19 hours to go.

By this time tomorrow, I'll be a complete mess. But I'll be having fun.

I'm sure lunch will be busy as all get-out tomorrow, and I'm sure my head won't be in the right place, but I'll make it through somehow. Nobody works or goes to school or anything like that during the ACC tournament around these parts. They just go somewhere with a tv and beer. We have lots of both.

After getting some responses to my post about annoyingly stupid customer complaints, and hearing some new ones, I was suddenly reminded of something. Another stupid customer "complaint" from back in the day when I was out of the industry. I was working for an auto finance company. A major one. I was dealing with folks who were delinquent with their payment. I was terrible at it, but that's beside the point. Folks would hear radio commercials and get irritated that they weren't getting the 0.0% financing advertised. They would then call me raising holy hell, and the conversation would go something like this:

me: "Hello. This is David Lee. How can I help you?"
customer:"Yeah. I hope you can, Mr. .... uh...."
me: "Lee"
customer: "Yeah, well, listen. I heard on the radio about this zero percent financing. I wanna get on that program."

(I get account information, pull their paper file, and their information on my computer)

me: "Well, you see. That offer is for qualified buyers only. You might not have qualified."

customer: "What? What are you trying to say?"

me: "I dunno. Just that your credit history made you ineligible for that offer. Besides, I don't set the terms of your loan. All we do at this office is handle the payments on the account."

customer: "Yeah, but don't you work for (company)?"

me: "Yes, but like I said, I didn't and don't set the terms of loans. However, since I have you on the line, your account is over 60 days past due. We need to receive payment or you will damage your credit even further."

customer:"So, I'm not gonna get the zero percent?"

This happened a number of times, and I was always baffled at how dumb they could be to call US raising hell, knowing full well that they were in serious danger of having their car repossessed. In a situation like this, it's usually more clever to make yourself invisible so the car doesn't get repoed.

I don't know why I felt the need to tell that story. I guess maybe to get my mind off of the Scrabble tournament. I think I need to relax a little. Not go in there so high-strung.