Friday, May 22, 2009

Think First

I feel a bit of an idiot.

This morning I checked my emails at work and saw one from an AbeBooks customer which read:

Hi, I'm interested in buying this book. Could you send me some photos of it and could you hold the book?

Why did he want me to hold the book? Was it so that he could get an idea of the book's size in relation to my hand, or was he some sort of freak who derived some weird gratification from making people perform pointless acts?

Within seconds I had visualised some sort of a rubber-clad gimp kneeling in front of their monitor, sending their perverse demands out into cyberspace.

I quickly got on my high horse and emailed a fairly pompous reply telling him that whilst I would gladly send images of the book, I would not be able to include ones of me holding it. Apart from anything, it would be difficult for me to hold a book and take a photograph at the same time.

An hour later he replied: Actually, I only meant could you reserve the book...

4 comments:

Art said...

He he he...oh, that is unfortunate. But funny.

Grey Area said...

arf!

A classic story I heard from a computer repair man was when he was called to say there was an issue with some software that had been supplied on floppy disc ( them were the days ) - so he asked for a copy of the disc to be sent to him, only to receive a photocopy of the floppy disc in the post ( both sides ).

I have a problem with language sometimes in that I take everything very literally - ( for one reason or another ) - so that's exactly the sort of thing that happens to me.

The Poet Laura-eate said...

Well he might have had a bit of a fetish that way - always wise to check!

;- )

Tim F said...

depesando:

Of course, this still goes on, as witnessed by the tale of the cake and the USB drive.