Thursday, September 3, 2009

Just the Fax, Man

Patron: I need to send a fax.

Me: Okay, how many pages is it?

Patron: Three. And this is the number they go to.

Me: Okay, looks good.

Patron: Oh, and can you send it to Marcos' attention? And tell him to call me when he gets it.

Me: Well, I have no way of telling anyone anything in a fax. I just feed the pages through the machine that you give me. If you want to make a coversheet and write on it that it's to Marcos' attention and you want a verification call back, you can do that, but then you have to pay for another sheet to go through.

Patron: You can't just tell him yourself?

Me: I'm...no. It's not a phone call. It's machine communicating with machine, transmitting what it scans here.

Patron: But it has a phone number.

Me: Yes, but...no. It's not me personally calling someone else. It's our fax machine calling their fax machine. There's no talking. You can do the coversheet though. Or call ahead and tell him the instructions.

Patron: On the fax machine?

Me: On the phone. Call him on the phone and tell him you're sending a fax, and want him to call to confirm when he receives it.

Patron: Will that cost more money?

Me: No, no. You pick up a telephone and call him on the telephone.

Patron: Your phone?

Me: Any phone. Okay, do you have a cellphone?

Patron: Yes, right here.

Me: Then you can use your cellphone to call Marcos and say you're sending a fax, to please call you when he receives it.

Patron: You want to use my cell?

Me: No. *sigh* No. Never mind. Let's just send the fax through.

Patron: Okay. Should I write on the top who it goes to?

Me: Sure, that's up to you.

Patron: I don't know why you didn't just say that in the beginning.

Me: *sigh* Neither do I.

2 comments:

Leelu said...

*pets* Wouldn't it be nice if we could just fax people? I mean, at least we could have the fun of pounding them flat enough to feed through the machine while we try. :D

Romana1 said...

Ahhh, that almost sounds like it could be an Abbott and Costello sketch!