I had a lovely exchange with a customer today. I’ll call him Mr. C. He teaches 2nd grade. He has a class field trip scheduled for tomorrow and called to see about getting an extra ticket. Once he communicated that, he apologized for putting me on speaker phone. He explained that he had been on hold for a bit and switched it on to get some things done and now that we were both on the line, he wasn’t sure how to turn it off. I reassured him I couldn’t tell I was on speaker and that normally I could. As I put in his order, he figured it out and let me know. I congratulated him and we shared a laugh. Still getting his order together, he asked if I was another person he’d spoken with before— gave her name. I said I wasn’t. He then asked my name and when I gave it, enthusiastically replied that I was the first person he’d spoken to when setting up the trip some months ago and how fitting it was to connect again as he was possibly buying a final ticket for it now. I was very much enjoying our exchange and agreed that it did seem fitting— almost full circle. I then gave him his order number and explained needing to take payment since the show was tomorrow. He asked me a few more questions and finally decided he’d wait until morning just to be certain he didn’t require any more tickets. I thought it wise and told him what he’d want to do when reaching out the next day. Then he said, “So you said, “Q..” And I paused, confused, silently putting the conversation on playback mode, just to be certain I hadn’t said the random letter before giving voice to my denial. “You were giving me an order number” he continued, and realization dawned. I told him I had said, “2.” And he laughed and shared a story of paying bills with State Farm and how they would give letters as part of the order number and he didn’t understand why they did this as some letters could easily sound like others over the phone. Instantly connecting with his story, I found myself laughing, telling him I knew of what he spoke as we, in the office, encountered it all the time with names and email addresses to the point where I habitually encouraged going a step further to make sure we were typing in “S” as in “Sam” instead of “F” as in Frank, etc. He laughed. I laughed. And the conversation ended with him saying he’d reach out in the morning about the ticket. I thought of the exchange again hours later when I got home. What a lovely, unexpected connection it had been. If I end up taking his call in the morning, it’ll be awesome. But if not, then it’ll be the final person in our trio of a department. And that would be fitting, too :)