That's E as in Equestrian...

This happened a little while ago but I have a half an hour to kill and it's one of my favorite stories from working here.

The Governor just got a new car a few months ago. With his car came a three month free trial of XM Satellitte Radio. Now, just putting out there that he is a grandfather and also can barely hear when you yell, I'm going to go with, he doesn't exactly listen to this particular radio. But that's just my thought on the subject.

Regardless, when a notice came in the mail asking whether he wanted to start paying for the XM radio, the Governor wasted no time in berating me for not doing so sooner and demanding that I renew his radio immediately. "Do you actually USE it?" I ask, and get a very dirty look and "do you actually USE it?" immitated back to me. Neat.

I call the company and get a very friendly but VERY over the top woman who wants me to spell everything. "What town does he live in, and can you spell it?" "Jamestown, it's J-A-M-E-S-T-O-W-N." And then, no word of a lie, she says back "that's J as in Joseph, A as in Apple, M as in Mister, E as in Equestrian..." For every word I tell her, she asks me to spell it, and for every word I spell, she repeats it back to me in such a way, giving me an example for every single letter. And the thing is, she uses the same word for every letter. For example, I had to tell her the letter "Q" a few times, at least twice. And both of those times, she repeated back "Q as in Quebec." What? Quebec? Not Quiet, Quail, Quote, Quixote? Quebec. Ok, lady.

Following all of the spelling, she asks me what I'd like to pay for. I tell her, as little as I possibly can, and she proceeds to tell me every single package the company offers, for every imaginable period of time. I listen patiently and finally tell her I'd like to sign him up for three more months. Slightly annoyed, she asks "why would you sign up for only three months at $39.99 when you could sign up for four years at [whatever the price was], saving [roughly a gagillion dollars]?"

"Honestly?" I say, having had it just about up to whatever "here" is. "Because the man I am doing this for fought in World War II, and flew bomber jets. In other words, he's too old to know how to work an XM Satellite Radio, and he's too deaf to hear it anyway. So when you send me the reminder that his three months are almost up, I'm going to accidently lose it, and stop wasting his money."

"Oh," she said. "So...can you spell his name for me, again?"

And so it goes...