The Customer's Shrinking Secretary

On any given day, the shop receives anywhere from ten to thirty phone calls.  The phone typically begins ringing sometime after 7:00 am and continues well into the evening. The topic of conversation is as varied as my vendors and often just as comical.  There's questions about our hours, the colors of Dixie Belle Paint in stock, would I like to buy their grandmother's china, can you ship furniture to Idaho, can you open at 5:30 am .... there's not much I haven't heard.

Until the other day.

The phone rang and on the other end was a customer I had spoken to many times before that week about a secretary (no, not that kind) and she wanted to know if it was still available.   I told her it was.  She said thank you and hung up rather abruptly.   A hour goes by and she called again...

"Is the secretary grey or white? Or is it an off white, maybe a beige?  It looks like it's grey in the photo.  It isn't cream is it?  I really need it to be grey, but an off white that looks grey would work."

After a long pause to make sure she wasn't just recharging for her next round of color inquisitions, I told her it was a soft grey.  BIG mistake.  That prompted a forty five second diatribe on the various possibilities of soft grey.  "Was it a dove grey, a stormy sky grey, a concrete grey", (I"m not making this up) ... when she took a breath I quickly interjected that the best thing to do would be for her to come to the shop and see it in person.  I explained that colors are often a matter of perception.  What is scarlet red to me, may be a burgundy to you. 

That last comment about sent her through her off white but not beige roof.  

"Wait, the secretary is also red?!?"

She made an appointment to stop by the next morning to see it in person.  We said goodbye and I giggled as I hung up the phone.  

Not five minutes went by and the phone rang again.  I recognized the number.  "God give me strength," I whispered to myself as I took a sip of vino and answered the phone....

"Hello, Paisley Pig, where the skies are never stormy grey and my lipstick is always red"...  (yes, I really answered the phone that way)

"I'm so sorry to bother you, just one more question..."  (apparently my humor was lost on her)

"Is it still 48" tall?"

This was too easy, I couldn't help myself... 

"No mam, it was 48" tall a few days ago, however, when we were sanitizing the shop last night, we washed it in hot water and it shrunk."

(Silence)

That should have been my cue to stop talking.  But if you know me at all, silence is the one virtue I never really grasped on to.  

"However, it is a bit wider than the last time you were here.  We have a new vendor who sells these fabulous cinnamon rolls, and well, we left a plate on the secretary and those sneaky little inches just kept adding on..."

Not realizing I was on speaker phone, I heard a deep boisterous laugh.  It was her husband...  

"She got you there hun!  Stop asking that poor woman so many damn questions and just go buy it already - and get some of those cinnamon rolls too!"

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Note:  This story was written with the customer's approval.  She said she would be honored, but didn't want me to use her name.  Her husband, however, gave me her full name and offered to pay me if I used it in this story.  

I love our customers.

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