Last week I was desperately
trying to communicate, via telephone, with someone just shy of being a
primate,
with them horribly misspelling my name, even after having me spell it for them.
My first attempt resulted in
something akin to a train hitting a deer.
Letters were read back to me everywhere and in no particular order.
Again I tried by speaking louder
and slower, to no avail.
Suddenly, I remembered my NATO
Phonetic Alphabet. This was a sure-fire
way to wade through the waters of stupid with no chance of error.
According to Wikipedia.org, the
NATO Phonetic Alphabet (NPA) is officially known as the International Radiotelephony
Spelling Alphabet. This system is used
to associate specific words to identify letters of the English alphabet so that
critical combinations of letters can be pronounced and understood by those who
transmit and receive messages by radio or telephone.
No chance for error in this premise. This is where you’ve heard people say things
like, “Uniform Sierra Alfa” for USA
So I decided to implement the NPA
to help expedite this goat rodeo.
Everything started off less than
promising when the idiot to whom I was speaking began writing out the words for
the letters. Suddenly my name went from
five letters to nearly 28.
I then tried to explain this
exercise to the imbecile on the other end of the conversation. “When I say ‘alfa,’ you write the letter
‘a’”.
“When I say ‘kilo,’ you write the
letter ‘k’. Got it?”
Their silence meant they were
rolling their eyes at me and likely giving me the finger. Nonetheless we were on our way to
abbreviating this telephonic waterboarding.
The smell of success was in the
air until I got to the “z” in my name.
This non-Mensa representative adlibbed by jumping ahead and inserting
her own identifying word, “xylophone,” which was not even close.
“Zulu!” I shouted.
“What? I thought you said ‘z’!” she retorted.
I did but, at this point it was
akin to arguing with a cat. She was no
brighter after my call and she still had a job dealing with people who had
little or no choice but deal with this embarrassment. Her boss should be fired unless that person
is even stupider than my point-of-contact.
In any case, there needs to be a
thorough shake-up at the Social Security Administration.
