Mitch er Martin

When we pulled off the highway with our ailing car - a fact that annoyed me no end because why should I have problems?  The Great Seaweed?  With car problems?  Not fair - something that should happen to lesser mortals, to people who are not as important as me.  That makes sense.  Problems for me is not a concept I'm comfortable with.

As a practitioner of gratitude - a poor student and mostly an unwilling one but a student, anyway; it's like high school where you have to go even if you don't want to  - I have taken the time to reflect on my years of work travel in the snowy upper Midwest.  I drove tens of thousands of miles in winter weather with never a car problem.  That was a blessing.  Losing a day off when I've got no real schedule to keep is not a problem.

Mark at the Shell station gave us a list of local businesses.  I called a few with no luck, maintaining my composure.  Then I had the bright idea of calling the 1-800-Why-The-Hell-Are-You-Bothering-Me? - customer service line of The Very Expensive Car Company.  They offered to send a tow truck over - for a $120 service charge - and deliver my car to the Very Expensive Car Dealer.

"But they're closed right?" I said, perplexed.  "They're not open, right?"
"Yes," she said.
"I don't understand," I said.  "What would I do that for?  I have a cat and a car full of stuff because I'm traveling.  What would I do at the closed car dealer?"
"I see," she said.
I wanted to say "I don't think you do because you wouldn't have made such a stupid suggestion" but Superk was listening and I didn't want to make any amends.  I was having a bad day as it was.  Instead I asked why I would tow a car with run-flat tires.  I'm not a car-guy but I understood "run-flat" to mean you can run them when they're flat.
"Sir, sometimes Pep Boys carries these tires.  Would you like me to connect you to Pep Boys?"
"Sure," I said.
"In fact, why don't I call them and see if they have the tire in stock.  Would that be helpful?"
"Yes," I said.

She went away for a while.  
"Should I just hang up?" I mouthed to SuperK.  She gets disgusted when I hang up on people and makes me call back and apologize.  Secretly, I think she gets a vicarious thrill when I do it.  She kind of eggs me on because she never hangs up on people, pretending she's better than me, which she is so it's no big stretch.

This went on for a while in a similar vein before I terminated the call. I wasn't getting anywhere and I really did want to get my problem solved.   I love it when service people who have provided no useful service conclude the call with: "Is there anything else I can do for you today?"
I'm always tempted to say: "That sentence structure suggests that you've done something useful for me already.  Which you have not."