So on my way to the ski resort this morning, my cell phone rang. Normally, I wouldn’t answer the phone while driving (especially on a potentially slippery mountain road), but I was expecting a call from my fellow skier, so I had on my hands-free thingie. As soon as I answered, I knew I’d made a terrible mistake. It was not my friend, Carol. It was the man from the VW dealership talking to me in French.
He kept telling me he was calling about my car and wanted to make an appointment for me to bring it in. Now, I didn’t know which car dealership he was calling from. I only caught that he was calling from blah-blah-blah in Grenoble about my voiture. Now, my car is begging me to take it in for what it calls service c. It’s a trip I’ve been putting off until I get back from London next week. As this man is babbling on to me about my voiture and making a rendez-vous, I’m thinking did my car show up in some computer at the Mercedes dealership and they knew to call me because I’m neglecting to tend to this matter? About when that stupid thought crossed my mind, the man said Golf. Oh… he’s calling about Bill’s car.
I had taken Bill’s car to the dealership in December. When I picked it up, they told me they’d had to order a part for the backup alarm and to come back in a week. I ended up canceling that appointment because it was just too hard without Bill around to take the car to the not-very-close dealership for an entire day. I couldn’t reschedule at the time because their computer was down. Bill and I decided to just not worry about it. This guy isn’t going to let it drop. He told me I had to bring in the car. I told him I cannot do it right now because it’s too hard without Bill here and I could do it in February. February! Oh, no no no! Then he said the magic word: guarantee. Guarantee? Ok, I am sure that Bill backing into something and breaking his sensor is not covered by a guarantee. I am confused but also convinced this is important. I tell him I don’t have my calendar with me (true) and that I’ll have to call him back. Or I said words close enough to that that he understood.
There’s no way I’m calling this guy back. Sounds like a good French lesson tomorrow.