Last week when Mandy and the girls flew back from Arkansas, Mandy had one of those serendipitous moments on the flight from Little Rock to Phoenix. Aboard that flight were Steve Gartman and his son, Michael. Steve and Mandy worked together before we were married at Gartman Systems, a computer systems company in Sheridan, Arkansas. It was the first time Mandy and Steve had seen each other in over 10 years.I received an email from Steve sharing his joy over seeing Mandy and the girls and in that email, he shared a hilarious story on my bride that I share with you today.
After seeing Mandy, I was reminded of my favorite Mandy story. I'm not sure you ever heard it and I don't tell it to embarrass her -- actually it was kind of cute.
As you remember she was our receptionist. When cell phones first started coming out (wasn't that long ago), we got our salesman Bobby a bag phone to assist him while on the road. Mandy's reception area was just outside my office. We also had a new "fancy" phone system where we could play music while someone was on hold. One day while sitting at my desk, I could hear Mandy obviously getting upset. If I leaned in my chair I could see her from my desk. I could see her with the phone to her ear and then I'd hear another line ring in. She got more and more frustrated.
Finally I decided I better intervene before she let someone, possibly a customer, have a piece of her mind. I went out and asked what was wrong. She said she was trying to get a message to Bobby and every time she called his cell number someone would call on the other line so she'd put the line to Bobby on hold and answer the incoming line only to have someone playing music in her ear.
Hmmmmmm?
As it turned out, Bobby had forwarded his calls back to the office. When Mandy would call him, it would forward back to our office, Mandy would put her call to him on hold (remember the music?) then answer the incoming call just to hear the music. It was funny and we reminded her of it often.
In reality, we could see ourselves doing the same thing but we never let her know that.
