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dragonlady7To start off with, the shipping coordinator just shouted, "Oh, my God."
"What?" I asked.
"This customer... his last name is Cox... OK, maybe it's a woman... but the first name..."
"What? What is it?"
"Gay!"
"Gay..."
"Cox. Who would do that to their child?"
Not the weirdest thing of the day, though.
Weirdest call:
"How many horsepower does your junior machine draw to power the motor?"
"Um..." I look it up. "120 volts... 80 watts... 1 amp... I don't know horsepower. May I ask why?"
"I don't have electricity. I was gonna hook it up to a deep-cycle marine battery."
"Oh. Uh..."
"My daughter's really sick, see, chemically sensitive, and she's just doing so poorly. I thought maybe we don't have to run the machine on full power, we could just put the machine right by her head and just clean the air there, while she's sleeping, and that might give her some relief. The batteries run for 24 hours or so. We know because we use them to power our electric drills."
"Wow, ok. Um, I don't know. Could I get your phone number and have our engineer call you back?"
"Well... We don't use telephones either. I'm calling from the phone of a kind neighbor. Could you write us a letter?"
"Sure thing."
They're Amish. They live in Ohio.
Apparently Amish houses use the same building materials as regular ones, which offgass formaldehyde when they're new, and his adult daughter, who's been suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome for 14 years, got married and moved into a new house, and is so sick she "can't perform her work." In an agricultural society, I imagine that's devastating.
I think the marine battery would work. I'm just waiting for the engineer to email me back so I can write them a letter.
"What?" I asked.
"This customer... his last name is Cox... OK, maybe it's a woman... but the first name..."
"What? What is it?"
"Gay!"
"Gay..."
"Cox. Who would do that to their child?"
Not the weirdest thing of the day, though.
Weirdest call:
"How many horsepower does your junior machine draw to power the motor?"
"Um..." I look it up. "120 volts... 80 watts... 1 amp... I don't know horsepower. May I ask why?"
"I don't have electricity. I was gonna hook it up to a deep-cycle marine battery."
"Oh. Uh..."
"My daughter's really sick, see, chemically sensitive, and she's just doing so poorly. I thought maybe we don't have to run the machine on full power, we could just put the machine right by her head and just clean the air there, while she's sleeping, and that might give her some relief. The batteries run for 24 hours or so. We know because we use them to power our electric drills."
"Wow, ok. Um, I don't know. Could I get your phone number and have our engineer call you back?"
"Well... We don't use telephones either. I'm calling from the phone of a kind neighbor. Could you write us a letter?"
"Sure thing."
They're Amish. They live in Ohio.
Apparently Amish houses use the same building materials as regular ones, which offgass formaldehyde when they're new, and his adult daughter, who's been suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome for 14 years, got married and moved into a new house, and is so sick she "can't perform her work." In an agricultural society, I imagine that's devastating.
I think the marine battery would work. I'm just waiting for the engineer to email me back so I can write them a letter.
