How Do You Come Across

 An unfortunate problem I have passed on to my offspring is that of being difficult to read. I suppose it is a uniqueness, just like everyone else's uniqueness that we appear to be so easy to read and yet are read incorrectly. The worst part is that we are so easy to read because there are no subtle signals, it's just out there. I will illustrate with an anecdote from several years ago. I switched my cell phone provider to Nextel because everyone I talked with had the du-doop connection. Eventually they all migrated to providers that were less proud of their service and I ended up with the incredible iPhone with less than lackluster service I have now. Before all that happened though, Nextel was bought out by Sprint.

Sprint was well-known for the pin drop commercials in the early to mid 90s, and their call quality was that good. A few months after I started with Nextel I received a call advertising a "hybrid" phone that had Nextel for the du-doop and Sprint for the phone calls. This gave me the odd ability to du-doop in some places I had no cell phone coverage and call people in places where I had no du-doop coverage. With free incoming minutes, it also allowed me to forward my work cell phone to my personal cell phone number. This wouldn't seem to be beneficial until you realize that when it went to voicemail callers heard my personal number. If they didn't know me well enough to know I did that, they thought they called the wrong number and hung up without leaving a message--so I didn't have to call back.

About the same number of months later, Sprint began an every other month call asking me how I liked the service. Now, the unspoken question they really were asking was if I wanted to upgrade my phone (which of course would extend my contract with them). When my contract ran out they began calling every month. Every time they called until I got rid of the service (and the month after when they still called) I told them I had a complaint and paused. That got their attention. Then I told them my complaint. The quality of the phone calls was so good that I couldn't tell when the phone dropped the call. The silence in the conversation matched the sound of simply holding the phone to your ear.

How would you take that? Compliment? Complaint? Me being me?

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