Her: Hello, Salvation Army, would you like to schedule a pickup?<\/p>\n
Me: Maybe, or maybe a dropoff if there's a dropoff center near me.<\/p>\n
Her: What's your zip code?<\/p>\n
Me [enunciating clearly, because I know I talk too quietly and fast on the phone unless I'm careful]: Nine, four, zero, four, three.<\/p>\n
Her: And your city?<\/p>\n
Me [enunciating clearly]: Mountain View, California.<\/p>\n
Her: Mountain View. Okay. [long pause] Milpitas?<\/p>\n
Me: Huh?<\/p>\n
Her: Milpitas?<\/p>\n
Me: No. Mountain View. Moun-tain View, two words.<\/p>\n
Her: Oh! Mountain View!<\/p>\n
[pause.]<\/p>\n
Her [mumbling, as if reading to herself from a scrolling list]: Santa Cruz, Sunnyvale, Milpitas, . . .<\/p>\n
Me [thinking Sunnyvale is close enough<\/i>]: There's a dropoff station in Sunnyvale?<\/p>\n
Her: Sunnyvale? No, no Sunnyvale.<\/p>\n
Me: Oh. I thought you said Sunnyvale.<\/p>\n
Her: No. Santa Cruz?<\/p>\n
Me: No, Santa Cruz is a 45-minute drive from here. Do you have anything in Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Redwood City?<\/p>\n
Her: No. Oh, wait, here: Sunnyvale!<\/p>\n
. . . And then after all that we determined that the Sunnyvale dropoff doesn't take what I'm donating, so I had to schedule a pickup after all.<\/p>\n
Really, I ought to know better by now than to try to have anything beyond the most basic of conversations with any customer-service person on the phone. I don't know how much it's them and how much it's me and how much it's my ever-present customer-service demon, but somehow it always seems to go like this if I try to depart in any way from the standard script (and often if I don't).<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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