Picky People
Well, this should really be: picky person. But there are so many where i work, and frankly, this one proved to be remarkably rational and amicable in the end. Still, i wrote this, and it amused me, and might you. I dunno. Enjoy!
Picky People
So, I wandered in on Monday thinking that everything was resolved. I had gone ahead and figured out a nightmarishly complex itinerary for someone who was not even going to be appearing on the agenda for the meeting.
Of course, this is no way reflected on this person’s sense of personal importance and therefore complicated any arrangements that needed to be made.
My Monday morning optimism and idyll were shattered (not that they are usually very present) as I spent from 8 to 11 on the phone listening to airline phone lines inform me that if I performed my transaction online then I would save money. Once I got to the third language I was screaming with mercy, begging to be put through to a human voice that could help solve the heinous Rubik’s cube of an itinerary that I had to contend with.
Of course, that was the point that someone came on the line.
After some brush explanations I booked all the tickets. For one ticket I had to purchase a return that was never going to get used to lower the price (this would require explanation later – but I figured I could cross that bridge another day). The last nightmare was to get one airline to accept miles on another that it supposedly shared some sort of mile sharing deal with. Of course, they wouldn’t make this simple and I had to phone both airlines twice to get assorted pieces of information that they initially claimed didn’t exist.
“Sir, I am going to be unable to process the request until you have the fine number.”
“Where can I get the fine number?”
“No sir, the fine number.” Her accent was getting thicker.
“OK, yes I get the point, a fine number. Where do I find this?”
“Ess, eye, gee, en, sir. Sign number.”
“Whatever. Where can I find this godforsaken number?”
“Excuse me?”
“Please simply tell me where to find this number. Where the hell are you based anyway?”
“Dublin sir”
Well that was baffling, why the Latin sounding accent?
And so it went. Eventually, I got through only to discover that the person I had previously reserved with had failed to make the reservations. Apparently the moronic employee (if I can call him thus) that I had dealt with on Friday had been making his entire transaction up. I was about to berate the nameless victim on the line (well, nameless is not entirely true. I am sure they had told me their name at some point – Paul or Lisa or some equally vacuous name – however, having once worked in telesales, I know that these names are made up (clever me, eh?) I used to call myself Paul).
In sum, it was hernia-esque. Slow and painful. Finally, by eleven the traction seemed to have passed and I had secured all the necessaries. I sent an email detailing everything. He wrote back asking the price. I told him. Silence.
My response appeared twenty minutes later. He showed up fuming, demanding to know why a transatlantic flight on two different airlines, with one-way upgradeable economy tickets on three different routes could possibly cost a lot of money. I tried to explain. No dice. Then the real reason surfaced.
“Am I going to be the asshole who is stuck in economy while the rest travel in business?”
Ah. Of course.
Suffice to say, I had to redo the whole fandango and will see whether this time it is acceptable. This of course pales in compare to the ticket I once had to organize that ended up costing more than the combined expenses run up by the entire rest of the delegation. But that is for another time.
Picky People
So, I wandered in on Monday thinking that everything was resolved. I had gone ahead and figured out a nightmarishly complex itinerary for someone who was not even going to be appearing on the agenda for the meeting.
Of course, this is no way reflected on this person’s sense of personal importance and therefore complicated any arrangements that needed to be made.
My Monday morning optimism and idyll were shattered (not that they are usually very present) as I spent from 8 to 11 on the phone listening to airline phone lines inform me that if I performed my transaction online then I would save money. Once I got to the third language I was screaming with mercy, begging to be put through to a human voice that could help solve the heinous Rubik’s cube of an itinerary that I had to contend with.
Of course, that was the point that someone came on the line.
After some brush explanations I booked all the tickets. For one ticket I had to purchase a return that was never going to get used to lower the price (this would require explanation later – but I figured I could cross that bridge another day). The last nightmare was to get one airline to accept miles on another that it supposedly shared some sort of mile sharing deal with. Of course, they wouldn’t make this simple and I had to phone both airlines twice to get assorted pieces of information that they initially claimed didn’t exist.
“Sir, I am going to be unable to process the request until you have the fine number.”
“Where can I get the fine number?”
“No sir, the fine number.” Her accent was getting thicker.
“OK, yes I get the point, a fine number. Where do I find this?”
“Ess, eye, gee, en, sir. Sign number.”
“Whatever. Where can I find this godforsaken number?”
“Excuse me?”
“Please simply tell me where to find this number. Where the hell are you based anyway?”
“Dublin sir”
Well that was baffling, why the Latin sounding accent?
And so it went. Eventually, I got through only to discover that the person I had previously reserved with had failed to make the reservations. Apparently the moronic employee (if I can call him thus) that I had dealt with on Friday had been making his entire transaction up. I was about to berate the nameless victim on the line (well, nameless is not entirely true. I am sure they had told me their name at some point – Paul or Lisa or some equally vacuous name – however, having once worked in telesales, I know that these names are made up (clever me, eh?) I used to call myself Paul).
In sum, it was hernia-esque. Slow and painful. Finally, by eleven the traction seemed to have passed and I had secured all the necessaries. I sent an email detailing everything. He wrote back asking the price. I told him. Silence.
My response appeared twenty minutes later. He showed up fuming, demanding to know why a transatlantic flight on two different airlines, with one-way upgradeable economy tickets on three different routes could possibly cost a lot of money. I tried to explain. No dice. Then the real reason surfaced.
“Am I going to be the asshole who is stuck in economy while the rest travel in business?”
Ah. Of course.
Suffice to say, I had to redo the whole fandango and will see whether this time it is acceptable. This of course pales in compare to the ticket I once had to organize that ended up costing more than the combined expenses run up by the entire rest of the delegation. But that is for another time.
posted by Raff @ 4:12 PM
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