A Tale of Customer Services

Anyone who has ever worked with the general public will know how entertaining and/ or challenging they can be, and almost everyone who's worked in customer services has at very least one story to tell.  I've worked as a silver service waitress, a sales assistant for an ethical cosmetics company and a customer services person at a music and battle reenactment store (yes, both at the same time), and I have a very wide arsenal of anecdotes about customers and the general public. Stories of diners snapping their fingers at me and snapping 'over here, girl', customers itching clouds of dandruff all over me to demonstrate how bad they have it, being shouted at, flirted at, selling replica Roman armour to a stripper (he was so beautiful it was ridiculous), the whole kaboodle.

My favourite story, however, will always be of the very confused gentleman who called up when I was working for the music and battle reenactment company. I couldn't have been working there for two weeks when this happened, and it was a wonderful way of being introduced to how bonkers the general public can be in retail.

Ring ring.

"Hello _____ Music, how can I help?"

"Ah, yes- er, yes. I was wondering, that is I was thinking about, considering, I was considering whether it was, ah, possible to maybe, that is I was wondering if you could perhaps plug a guitar into, say, a harmonica.'

"Er- sorry, could you run that past me one more time?" He had 'um-ed' and 'aah-ed' and backtracked so many times, I wasn't quite sure I understood what he was getting at.

"Ah- yes yes of course! I was wondering if you could, um, advise me on how to go about plugging my harmonica into my guitar."

This cleared absolutely nothing up for me and I was slightly flummoxed by this idea, but decided to play the helpful techy geek. "Alright- what sort of sound effect are you hoping to achieve?"

"I was hoping I could play my harmonica and make it sound like a guitar."

I paused to take this concept in, and tried stoutly to remain helpful. "Ah. Well... I'm afraid you can't really jack a harmonica straight into a guitar, but you could-"

"What about the holes?"

"Use a-" I paused again. "Sorry?"

"A harmonica has holes, right?"

I faltered a little. "It does yes, but as it's an acoustic instrument- well, you can only blow into the holes to create the resonance."

"Ah."

I persisted. "If you wanted to take the sound of your harmonica and transform it, you could try using a vocoder- you could play into a microphone and style the resulting sound however you wanted. I'm not sure you could get a true guitar sound though."

"So I could play into a microphone."

"Yes."

"And I could play the guitar into the mic too?"

"Yes, or you could actually plug your guitar directly into the vocoder."

This was quite clearly the wrong thing to say.

"So how would you plug the harmonica in?"

I took a deep breath. "You'd only be able to plug your electric guitar in. As the harmonica is an acoustic instrument, you'd need an external way- for example a microphone- to pick the sound up."

"Ah, I see."

There was a pause. I took another deep breath. "Is there anything else I can help you with?"

"No, that was all- thank you so much, I totally understand now! None of the other music shops I've asked have been able to clear this up for me. Thank you!"

I smiled in spite of myself at his enthusiasm. "Not at all, I'm glad I was able to help."

"Alright, I'll go look at the right cables to connect up my harmonica and guitar now. Thanks again! Bye!"

"Er wait, no-"

*Click*

And he was gone. My manager spotted me still standing with the phone in my hand, stunned, as the dialling tone continued to whine.

"You'll get a lot of those" he said, with a sympathetic grin.

~Fin~

When Shops Use Pictures Instead of Words

Found this barber shop on my way to work the other day:

Any suggestions on how one would go about trying to pronounce the shops name??

Short Stories: Making an Utter Arse of Myself- Part 2

(So soon? Why, yes. I told you there'd be more to come.)

I had a great day out in the West End with another good friend, Siu Yen, today. We first met at university in first year when we both took a foundation Japanese course as a side-study to our majors. Like all of my friends, she has her own unique and humorous way of seeing how the world works, and according to her I bring our her weirder side (this is a good thing, I'm told!)

She also knows I have a penchant for pretty edible things, sweet things and exotic food, and she kindly brought me a selection of Japanese sweets she'd found, ranging from biscuity to cakey to chewy.

On the train home I ate the mini mochi, mini dorayaki, and small handful of mini chewy sweets. The one I saved for last was an interesting-looking purple parcel that fitted in the palm of my hand, quite different from the others because the packaging obscured what was inside. I should have taken this as a warning, but instead I saw it as a challenge. Likewise when I prodded it and found that it was very, very squishy, I should have listened to my internal monologue that said 'hmm, this is probably going to be messy- better open it at home over a plate.' But instead, I opened it on the train.

It was one of those horrific moments where once you've committed yourself to a task, there's no going back, even though you realise instantly what a terrible mistake you've made. Instantly a sticky sugar syrup started oozing from the tear I made from the top, and because I had birthday presents for two people in the same bag, there was only one real way to dispose of the mess: by eating it.

I began by attempting to suck the syrup out from the tear, which proved to be noisy and just a bit on the socially unacceptable side. The train was packed full, so I really didn't want to draw attention to myself, and I abandoned this method as soon as the packet wasn't brimming with syrup. However I was still unable to just put the packet away because it was still leaking syrup- so I went for it and ripped the packet open further.

I was presented with a very squidgy, clear jelly-type thing, with what looked like an umeboshi (pickled plum) embedded in the middle. I knew it would taste fine, but I knew that visually, it looked quite horrendous. It certainly wobbled very indecently, and it wasn't just jiggly, it was slimy too.

I tried to delicately catch it with my teeth straight from the packet to avoid other people on the train having to see this alien-looking sweet, but only managed to bite off a small piece because it was so soft. After a few failed attempts I decided I was making more of a spectacle of myself with this clumsy display, so I went for it, took the slimy thing out with my fingers and bit straight into it.

The next part happened in a matter of seconds.

I bit straight into the umeboshi stone and choked in pain and surprise. This one simple action caused me to smear the remaining jelly across my face with one hand, and crush the packaging in my other hand, which caused the rest of the syrup to explode all over me.

Now exasperated, sticky and looking quite worse for wear, I glanced upwards, where a large family, who had apparently been observing me in silence, smiled sympathetically at me before getting off at their stop.

~Fin~

Short Stories: Making an Utter Arse of Myself- Part 1

You know you were doomed to having one of those days from the start when it takes you the entire day to realise that the reason why your T-shirt is so uncomfortable is because you have it on backwards.

(I've put 'Part 1' because I make an utter arse of myself way too often, so there will surely be more to come.)

I do seem to have a bit of a track record with public toilets. Until today the one that sticks most in my mind is the time I walked very bodily into a full-length mirror in the Birmingham Bullring ladies' loos during my student days, and apologised quite loudly to what I thought was another person (but what was actually, of course, my reflection), to much pitying laughter of the general public. In my defense the mirror reached right down to the floor and was the exact size of a doorway... it's not a very strong defence, is it?

Today doesn't quite top it, but I think it's worthy enough to be up there in my public toilet Experiences.

Today at work whilst walking to the loos I was a bit preoccupied with my unusually uncomfortable T-shirt (I still hadn't cottoned on I had it on backwards, yet), so I was trying to tug it into submission with both hands.

Unfortunately I still wasn't paying attention when I got to the toilets, because as I reached out to push the door open with my right hand (imagine the door of the loos are to my right), I was still looking down at my T-shirt.

I completely missed the door and pushed quite heavily against solid doorframe, which in turn caused me to pivot backwards into the door itself. As I pitched over in reverse, totally out of control, both arms and the one leg that wasn't connected to the floor flailing akimbo in all directions, I had enough time to see the small group of managers staring at me before I completely disappeared head-first and backwards behind the swinging door.

~Fin~

Thigh-Deep in Floods and My Worst Nightmare (Part 2)

You'd have thought the bizarreness would have ended the moment we got out of the floods.

Part 2: My Worst Nightmare

I'll cut straight to the chase- my worst nightmare has always been, since the age of four (which was when I began learning to play the piano), going into a concert completely unprepared. The very thought of going out onto some sort of stage in front of an audience to play music whilst not knowing what on Earth I'm supposed to be doing breaks me out into a cold sweat. Because I am so, so organised as a person, I made sure this never, ever happened.

You can see where I'm going with this, can't you?

It all started a week earlier when Ruthie texted me asking if I was free to visit the following weekend (the weekend just gone by, now). Then as we were negotiating the timing of when I was coming and going, it turned out that Ruth was playing in a small concerty thing in a church on the Saturday night- after checking with her group, it was fine that I could come watch.

Four days before I was due to visit, I got a tentative text from Ruthie asking if maybe we could play something together- her on the violin, me on the piano. I was really enthusiastic- I haven't performed in ages! And it seemed we were to do a Spanish dance by De Falla- something I was already familiar with.

Of course though, when we got to hers and got the instruments out, it turned out that I knew a very different De Falla Spanish dance. And I'd completely overlooked the fact that I couldn't sightread on the piano to save my life, despite being a diploma-level pianist (the short unprepared study was hilarious when I did the exam). I can pick something up instantly on flute or voice, but give me something with two lines that I have to play with both hands on the spot for something over grade 4 standard and I'm pretty much useless. Neither of us can improvise, and in the end all we could do together was a short version of Bach's Ave Maria.

So in the end poor Ruthie played the guitar and sang instead of doing the show-stopping De Falla. And guess who had an hour to remember pieces of music I haven't played in years to play by heart, to now play solo?

Cold sweat.

We went to Ruthie's friend's house to do some last minute-rehearsal. They were going to pretty much finish the concert with the Sailor's Hornpipe, which is what always ends the last night of the Proms in London, if you've ever seen it. Everyone has a horn and goes 'honk honk' in the appropriate places. At the moment it was Ruthie on the violin and her friend's father on recorder- but then the idea emerged that I could play along on the piano at the same time. All I had to do was work out the correct chord sequence in five minutes.

Cold sweat.

I did just that, though. It wasn't hard- I've always been decent at harmonisation- but it was a bit daunting under pressure.

With that sorted, we went to the church (at which point Ruthie realised she'd left half her music back at her friend's). She was able to improvise though- and it wasn't so bad, because out first duty was to play the audience in as they grabbed a Pimms and began to settle down. Ruthie's friend's sister played the saxophone, followed by Ruth on her violin, both behind a screen to provide background music.

When it came to my turn, I realised that the piano was not behind a screen- it was in full view of everyone

Cold sweat.

I settled down and played I Giorni by Ludivico Einaudi (I can always fall back on Einaudi when in a pinch, and play it by heart). At first it was just pleasant background music. Then gradually, as I had dreaded and predicted, the room began to fall silent, bit by bit. Everyone must have though I was performing for real.

I heard a small patch of people doggedly keeping up conversation, and knew with gratitude it must be Ruth and her friends trying to keep up some noise for my sake (she told me later they had to stop because people were giving them dirty looks). In any case, I did what I did best (looked like I was cool and in control whilst I was bricking it inside) and finished with near-nonchalance. It was just about the right time to start the real concert by now, so at least I'd made a nice introduction I suppose. Just not one that I was prior aware of!

We all managed to do our stuff- it turns out that we weren't the only ones quite unprepared! However like true musicians, we pulled it off and the audience were none the wiser. I think. I even managed to do a rendition of 'Happy Birthday' with about twenty seconds' notice for someone in the audience. It was the last instrumental piece that put the king in the cake, though.

The sailor's hornpipe.

I noticed that there were a load of those party horns/ mini vuvuzela things around, and I realised that the audience really was going to participate and do the proper Proms honk-honking to the music. But how were we going to let the more inexperienced participants in the audience know when to start coming in?

And that was how I ended up playing the piano with a mini vuvuzela jammed in my mouth.

~Fin~

The Sailors Hornpipe

Thigh-Deep in Floods and My Worst Nightmare (Part 1)

I've just had the weirdest weekend (or at least, Saturday), ever.

Part 1: Thigh-Deep in Floods

Ruthie (Mobile): Morning! What's your footwear like? Am thinking the fields are gonna be mudtastic! xxx

Me (Mobile): I've got waterproof walking boots in prep for ruralness. =P And flat ballet pumps for later! xxx

Ruthie (Mobile): My kinda girl! xxx

And to think I was proud that I'd thought to wear my waterproof walking boots...

This weekend I was visiting my good friend Ruthie, who lives in Leicester. It was a very last-minute thing, Ruthie having finished her first year postgrad medicine exams and had the news of passing, and we were also playing in a very last-minute concert later that evening (more on that in Part 2...) She lives in a lovely village near Sileby, which I've visited once before. It's very green, and the sort of place that many people in the city wish they could escape to now and again.

Knowing we might be crossing some damp fields to get from Sileby station to Ruthie's house, I donned my trusty walking boots. I was dimly aware that there had been flooding across the country, but Leicester hadn't really been in the limelight in the news, so I assumed it'd be okay.

I could not have been more wrong.

I got to Leicester station from London St Pancras with my big Sainsbury's bag full of lovingly decorated and packaged cupcakes, which I had baked the night before for Ruthie, her husband Tom and her friends (who'd be providing me with food later) as a 'thank you' for having me.

I was in the station café whilst waiting for my connecting train to Sileby, nursing a rather lackluster and disappointing hot chocolate and the biggest banana muffin I have ever met, when my phone rang.

'Hello!!' said Ruthie.

Slosh. Slosh.

'Hi', I said, ignoring the weird watery sounds and the obvious double exclamation mark in my friend's voice for the time being. 'I'm just in Leicester station about to get the Sileby train. Y'allright?'

'Yes!! Er... yes! I'm sort of in a field...'

It turned out that the sloshing sound was Ruthie wading through knee-deep water, the flood already way over the tops of the wellies she had had the insight to wear to come and meet me at the station.

'Okay,' I said, after I'd gotten over my initial disbelief at the mad situation my poor friend was in, 'We can take a road route instead of going cross-country and avoid the worst of it.'

'The road we took the last time you visited?'

~FLASHBACK TO LAST WINTER~

Ruthie and I walked along a very non pedestrian-friendly road from the station in pitch darkness, with nothing but her slightly smashed up phone as a source of light, serving more as a warning to oncoming cars than as a way for us to see ahead and not fall into a ditch in the countryside that flanked us. When a car did come, we jumped into the bushes and flattened ourselves out as best we could whilst trying to avoid nettles and thorns invisible to us in the dark of night.

It was either this, or walk across the fields in the dark of night and potentially fall into a river.

~ END FLASHBACK~

'At least it's light out this time?' I offered.

Eventually I got to Sileby and sure enough met Ruthie, her jeans very obviously sodden well past her knees. We set off on a route we hadn't taken before, after consulting Tom (Ruthie's husband) over the phone. The 'ROAD CLOSED' sign should have been a clue. In fact it probably did register at the back of our minds- but at the time it was the only real option we had other than going across the flooded fields like Ruthie had. So we soldiered onwards.

 As we went along the road, Ruthie pointed out to me how flooded the fields around us were, and indeed it was like they had been transformed into lakes, with the tops of bushes and trees sprouting from them.

When we came to a fork in the road, one of the paths was completely submerged, and Ruthie called Tom up again to make sure we took the right one. Thankfully we needed to take the dry one- although our celebrations were premature, as you'll find out in a moment. As we set off down the right path, a small white van with the words 'boat hire' came splashing through the flooded one.

'Now that's just what we need,' I joked to my friend- an unknowing and, now that I think about it, almost chilling fortelling of what we were about to face.

As soon as we came to our first flooded patch, it was instantly clear that my waterproof boots weren't going to do me an ounce of good. As for my friend, who had already had her wellies submerged and then some, her wellies had actually stopped being watertight, so even though at this point her footwear should have given her some protection, she was just as bad off as I was.

The water rose higher and higher, and the current got stronger and stronger. Soon it was mid-way up to our thighs, and we were struggling with wading in a straight line and hitching our bags up to protect our belongings from getting damp- and of course, the precious, precious Sainsbury's bag of cake.

At some point Ruthie relieved me of cake duty and took a turn at carrying the bag high in the air above the water, since we were pretty much consistently up to our thighs in flood water now. Here's where some perfect, perfect irony happened.

Whilst Ruthie was on cake duty and we were joking about how the cake was the most important thing to save, I told her a story about how I'd sacrificed myself to save a cake a few years ago (a story I haven't posted here). Back in my teaching days, I'd baked a nice big Victoria sponge with jam and cream as a Christmas present for my class for the last day of term before the holidays. It had been snowing heavily for days, and the ground had frozen over, overnight- it was very, very icy. During my morning walk to the bus stop, the inevitable happened, and I went flying- and my first instinct was to save the cake. So I dived forwards with my hands outstretched, ensuring the cake would never impact against the ground. My face, however, did.

It had barely been five minutes that I'd told this story when Ruthie suddenly slipped off the pavement and into a ditch, having not seen where the pavement had ended beneath the deep and murky water. She was now waist-high in muddy flood water, arms windmilling and wobbling to keep some semblance of balance- but with the bag of cupcakes safely held high over her head.

(I'm almost ashamed to say that at this point I plucked the bag out of her hands and took a picture of her to put up on Facebook later).

And so we continued, encountering a few brave cyclists, one who actually went over sideways (an old gent who was a real trooper when we spoke to him), a jeep that had also been flooded, a brave and frantically swimming vole we attempted to rescue and, both strangely and beautifully, an array of bright blue dragonflies and red admiral butterflies flitting around, clearly in their element. Less beautiful were the occasional biting horseflies, which turned my friend and I, usually both quite confident with Mother Nature, into flailing and squealing little girls (but seriously, have you seen the damage those little bastards can do?). At one point we also came across a flooded pub car park, with one lone and very confused duck swimming around. We were most definitely, however, the only pedestrians that had braved the route.

We eventually emerged from our watery path, my boots now squelching and heavy with all the water they had soaked up and Ruthie pausing every so often to perform an almost balletic pose, where she'd lean over forwards and crook one leg upwards so the flat of her foot was pointing skywards, to drain her wellies of flood water. We thought of all the drain water that we must have waded through, and decided a shower was very much in order when we got to hers.

Ruthie told me during all this that she was glad it was me that she was with, because I have such a good sense of humour. To this I say: how on Earth could you get yourself into this situation, and not laugh?

The cakes are safe!

~End of Part 1~

My Weird Massage Experience

So here I was last Friday (three days ago, in fact), face-down on a high table in the beached whale/ sleeping walrus position wearing bugger all but my pants and having a stranger kneading my back like dough and operating my limbs like levers. To her credit, the masseuse did a brilliant job and I really felt a difference by the end of it- it was the journey itself that was particularly... unique.

Last Saturday was the wedding of two very dear friends of mine, the bride to be being my best friend and general partner in mischief (all three of us met at archery club at university, which pretty much sets the scene), and the bride to be, Lucia, was quite keen on the idea of having a full body massage before the wedding: I had to agree it was absolutely the perfect excuse for it. I've never had a massage before- I've never been down with the idea of people getting their mitts on me- but I've always wanted to give it a go. Who doesn't want to be pampered and relaxed? So we met up on Friday having booked a session at a well-respected spa, and we were led to separate rooms.

Lucia later told me, not in these exact words but in the way I picture the scene, that she experienced the sort of massage you see on TV- firm but blissful, with soothing music and the sounds of nature floating in the fragrant air.

Here is what happened in my room.

First the masseuse, thankfully female, instructed me to strip down to my pants and lie face-down on the table between two sheets, and left the room to allow me to sort myself out. Standing in a strange room in nothing but your knickers is a little disconcerting, so I made every effort to be as quick as possible about this business.

Next I advanced to the table with grim determination. It was quite a bit higher than I expected- that is to say, I knew it would be high-ish, but being right next to it made me realise that my complete lack of grace, despite my smaller form, was going to make this next part tricky. So after a few attempts at lobbing myself at the table like a seal flopping heavily against a rock to get out of the sea, I managed to get myself in position and cover up.

The masseuse came back in once she'd established I was the next closest thing to being decent, and got me to put my face into what I can only describe as the facehole in the table, and to arrange my arms down my sides in the beached whale/ sleeping walrus position. She then switched on the stereo to some pleasant panpipe music, and got to work on my back.

It was awkward at first, but it only really took me ten minutes or so to get used to this unusual situation. Which is approximately when the dulcet tones of a young Aled Jones emerged from the stereo.

'We're walking in the air...'

My eyes snapped open in confusion, and I heard the masseuse clear her throat in a rather embarrassed way- I got the feeling that this had happened before. No matter, I thought, it isn't a bad song, just a bit strange with the sun beating down through the window in late June. I waited for the song to end and the panpipes to come back. But they never did.

'I'm dreaming of a white Christmas...'

'Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...'

'Simply having a wonderful Christmas time!'

On and on they went, on this hot summer's day, and I only managed to get through two songs before I was laughing out loud. 'Trust me, it'd be a lot worse without the music' said the masseuse, with a strange mixture of good humour and grimness. I tried to detach myself from the Christmas sountracks, and just concentrate of having my back turned to cotton wool.

Before turning to my legs, the masseuse gave one last almighty two-handed SMUSH to my back, like trying to close a particularly full suitcase, and I felt my face sink further into the facehole. It was fine though, I was still pretty comfortable. I only noticed what had happened when I was asked to flip over.

I blinked, feeling self-concious again. 'Really?' I actually asked out loud, nervous. It was alright though, the masseuse was holding a towel up so I could cover myself up. So I started to roll over.

My body went, but my face stayed where it was.

'Rocking around the Christmas tree...'

I was properly stuck. The masseuse was laughing as I literally had to place both my hands on either side of my head and tug furiously before my face freed itself with an almost cartoon-like 'pop'. I felt my forehead- sure enough there was a huge, deep groove running right across it. Barely containing her laughter, the masseuse assured me it'd go down eventually.

I never really got back to the relaxed state- and in the end the poor masseuse had to stick some cotton wool pads over my eyes because my wild eyes staring blankly at the ceiling must have freaked her out a bit- but eventually it was all done and I was left to my own devices again.

I rolled off the table, now a seal returning to the comfort of the sea, and gratefully put my clothes back on. Luckily I was just doing my last boot when another person burst in on me before hurriedly apologising and dodging back out again. I noticed that I felt like I was weightless- the masseuse really knew her stuff, then.

I wandered back to the seating area, slightly dazed, where I found my good friend in a state of zen.

'I feel like I'm floating', Lucia sighed contentedly. 'How was yours?'

'Er...' I began, as she peered quizically at my forehead.

~Fin~