on ordering for school from Sicily

When I was a teacher-leader for Reading Recovery in the States, all it took to order was to call the book rep (whom I knew from conferences) and say, "Here's what I want. Can you do it?" Then write up a purchase order. Not so from Sicily.

On Wednesday our principal called a small team together to say we have a large amount of money to buy books for our water-destroyed book room. The catch was that we have to submit a request as soon as possible (preferably this coming Tuesday, the day after a holiday weekend). Thinking it an easy job, the principal told us she would get us substitutes for Friday morning and we could get our ordering done.

We met Friday morning and after looking at all the choices, decided on two companies for the majority of the books. We wanted to get the most for our money so we decided to call each company to see what they could do--after all, this was major money, even for these companies. Calling wasn't as easy as one might think. Only three phones in our building are connected in a way that will allow calls out of the country, and they are all in our main office. We also have to wait until at least three o'clock to call because of the six to nine hour time difference. Taking the phone numbers off their website didn't really help because two of those numbers only got us a recording that said we had reached a (company name) unworking number.............then nothing...no redirections....just dead phone. Finally we got a live person.

First call:

Operator: Welcome to _______publishing, my name is Fatima, may I help you (strong accent---was she from India, maybe?)

Me: Hi, my name is Marianne Fletcher and I work for a Department of Defense school in Sicily serving the children of our military personnel. We would like to buy several thousand dollars worth of books in ___________series for our bookroom. Can you connect me with a sales rep?

Operator: I'm sorry, we don't have an Italian language edition of those series.

Me: No, no, no. We are an American school in Sicily

O: Let me give you the number of our Italian representative.

Me: No, no. We only have American language students. I NEED an American sales representative.

O: What state would that be?

Me: Well, everything would be shipped to our FPO address so I guess that would be New York

(wait, wait, wait at overseas long distance prices)

O: Here is the number for our UK (England) representative

Me: NO! NO! I NEED AN AMERICAN REPRESENTATIVE. We will be ordering through a United States representative and it will only need to be shipped to New York.

Three calls later we were still trying to get a sales rep. Deciding to try an alternate number from the website we got someone who was willing to help us. Even as helpful as she was we were stuck at the part in her computer program that asked for an address and wouldn't accept a Post office number and/or box number. We were f-i-n-a-l-l-y turned over to the international rep based in New York who was a great help.


Second company phone call made by a different teacher: Same shpeel about DoD school, blah, blah, blah.

Company person: I'm sorry, we only sell to public school and private schools.

After explaining that we are a public school----of Americans----she got basically the same "help" that I did.