Wow. Now that was interesting.
I’m sitting here on the couch. It’s 7:45 pm and the phone rings. A woman from the Hanauer Anzeiger, a local newspaper in a neighboring city, is on the phone and wants to know how we enjoyed our free two-week subscription to the newspaper in August.
Me: “Well, we never got the papers. They never arrived.”
Her: “You really should have called to let us know. I mean you can’t just expect us to KNOW that you weren’t receiving the paper. How could we possibly have any idea what was going on?”
Me: “Yes, I understand that. We had other things to worry with here and it really just wasn’t that important to us. Since you had trouble getting the trial started correctly, we figured a real subscription could also be problematic. The paper wasn’t a priority for us.”
Her: “It’s just unacceptable that you didn’t let us know what was happening. These things just can’t be left unmentioned…” And then she continued to lay into me for another few minutes about not calling them; getting more agitated and louder as she kept talking. She just couldn’t believe that we would not report the problem and was apparently offended that we would think that this is how the paper usually performs.
Personally, we really just didn’t care enough to call them anymore. The first few days we were on vacation, and it was almost a week into the trial before we realized we weren’t getting the newspaper. We talked about calling them (especially when we got a sign-up card from them about a month later, stating that they hoped we’d enjoyed the trial) but they weren’t billing us and we had lost interest by then. Sure, they could provide us info on all the stuff going on around here. But honestly, we barely read the free papers we get every week and the sale fliers. We took the trial because we went to look up an accident on their website and noticed that you can only read a short summary of the articles if you aren’t getting the paper. And we really were rather turned off that they couldn’t get something as simple as a two-week trial started. It’s not like they had our address wrong since all the mail from them arrived. So that leaves either a lazy or dumb delivery person or some other breakdown in their delivery system to blame..and neither of those make me too happy either.
Finally, after the woman was fussing at me for a good 3 minutes, I said, “Look. I don’t need you getting irate on the phone.” I actually used the word “irate” in English with a bit of German-ification on it because I had no clue what words to use in a circumstance like this.
She seemed to understand my point but continued to carry on. Finally I said in English, “Do not yell at me.”
Instead she kept going, getting even louder. “Don’t yell at me,” I repeated.
Quite frankly I was so surprised at the way she was reacting that I couldn’t think of anything to say in German to shut her up without being rude. This is a little something I’m working on since I tend to be rather curt and to the point with people in German, mostly because I am still missing a lot of words to make things come out nicer…but I tend to be bitchy anyway with people that agitate me, which comes out even meaner in German when it’s me saying it.
That’s when she replied, “Nice. (Schön.)” And then hung up on me.
I never even got to find out why she called in the first place. I guess they were going to pitch us a subscription…but maybe she just wanted to pick a fight with someone. Would have been nice if I had caught her name. It was quite a strange call, though. And one thing is certain – that’s one newspaper that will never be bought or read by us again!
