Dec. 1: Phonics are off the hook

I hate telephones sometimes. Among many, many other things.

I just had to call customer service for a web site I have shopped from several times. There was a problem with my last order and I e-mailed them twice about it but hadn't heard anything back. It's one of my pet peeves about ordering over the Internet; if you tell customers to contact you via e-mail and then don't respond for a week, you should not have an Internet business.

And sometimes you have no idea what that Internet business is actually like. I mean, they could have a snazzy web site and appear to be a huge and very busy company. But in reality they could have hamsters running the show. I guess expecting a response within the 24 hours they promise might be a high expectation.

So, I dialed 'em this morning... and I think I woke someone up. Actually, the guy was probably using a headset because it sounded a little fuzzy (like a hamster) or underwater. He said something like, "Thank you for calling ****, please give me your e-mail address frajergoijly."

I replied, "I'm sorry, can you repeat that?"

He said, in the same tone and volume and hamster-fuzziness, "Please give me your e-mail address forgetically."

HUH??? I chuckled a little and said, "I'm sorry... I can barely hear you." What I meant was "I can barely understand you," but I didn't want to be mean.

He actually said, and I quote (hence the quote marks), "Oh, PLEASE."

Picture me doing something like this:


(There were also a few f-words going through my head but I couldn't find a good graphic for that.)

I could hear him messing around with something and then said, "Can you hear me now?"

I said, "Sort of..." because NO, I COULDN'T and was also still making that face above.

And he said again, "Please give me your e-mail address traumatically."

WHAT did he say? He didn't have an accent, so besides speaking a little fast there was no reason for me not to understand him. Grammatically? Last time I checked, it didn't start with an "F" but maybe the rules have changed. Frenetically? Frogmatically? Fergie-licious? I had thought at first he was saying phonetically, which made no sense if he was using that to look up my account, not to mention the fact that there is no "R" in phonetically.

Alas, I shall never know. I hung up. I'll call back later and hope the guy's on lunch break and another hamster is answering his phone.

Stupid Internet companies. If they'd train their employees to answer their e-mails they wouldn't HAVE to teach them fancy words to use on the phone.