I snatch the receiver to my ear and sing out our company's happy greeting.
I wait.
"Hello. This is Tom from Winnipeg."
I nod, with the receiver in my ear.
"Hi, Tom. How may I help you?"
"I bought your coffeemaker in good faith but when I got it home . . ."
Oh, boy. Another one of these.
Now, all day I'm an in-house salesman for chainsaw equipment.
I call on loggers, arborists, and the retail outlets that call loggers and arborists their friends and customers.
We don't sell home appliances.
The 800 numbers are one digit off. Ours ends in a "0".
The other ends in something else. All the other numbers match.
But not the last one.
"I'm sorry, Tom. We sell stuff for chainsaws."
"Well, I'm holding the sheet that came in the box and this is the number I'm to call with problems."
He reads me the number.
Yep.
It's ours.
"What to tell you, Tom. I can sell you some chain if you have a saw, but I can't fix your coffee-maker."
"But this is the number -"
"Maybe try an, uh, "8"?"
Tom pauses. He tentatively asks,
"If that doesn't work, do I call you back?"
"Well, sure, if you want to, Tom. Then I guess we'll work on 1 through 7."
Tom laughes finally and we say our good-byes.
I take a pull from the cup of semi-cold Elixir sitting by the phone.
(Our coffee-maker works).
Then it hits me.
Huh.
Isn't that how some brilliant people view the truth?
"It's just important that you believe what you believe."
"Just pick one that works for you and go with it."
"There is not, nor can there ever be, an absolute truth for all of us."
"Any truth is truth if you believe."
Yeah. Well.
I can believe the wrong number is the right number - but that isn't going to fix my coffeemaker.