wow.

I was in the office by myself on Thursday, and of course, was swamped. I had about 18 things to finish before leaving on vacation, the phone kept ringing, and customers kept coming in. Oh, and cell service was out all afternoon and the Tribal offices were closed, so we couldn't even get ahold of anyone we needed to, either.

So sometime that morning, a guy calls in. He's looking for an obituary for his mom. Except he is kind of an angry fella, and all he tells he is that she died in 2002. When I tried to explain that all we have are hard copies, we don't have an online database, he got angry. When I said that if we research it ourselves and it takes very long, we have to charge $15/hour, he got rude. Eventually he hung up on me.

So about two hours later his brother called back. He apologized, saying that "My brother is kind of an angry person...he's an alcoholic..." all this stuff. He gave me some more specific info on the obituary, and I found it in about 5 minutes. He said he's send us an addressed, pre-paid postage envelope w/ a money order, and we could send him the copy of the obit. Fine, i said.

Then he goes back to explaining how troubled his brother is, and ended by saying, "the way things are going, it looks like I'm gonna be going to the rodeo by myself....so if you're not doing anything this weekend...?"

So I got asked to go to the Rosebud rodeo by a call-in customer because he didn't want to go with his alcoholic brother. Pity, I had prior plans.

fml.