Hel-lo !!

The guy behind the counter at S*m's Club didn't seem fully focused when I asked him to add 1200 minutes to my mother's phone card. That started it all. My suspicion that it wasn't done correctly.  Then my mother told me that when she last used the card, it didn't sound like there was anything like 1200 minutes on it. I immediately assumed the worst. 

So I used the card to make a call and heard there were 1000-something minutes left on the card. That could not be right.

I gathered my evidence and called the phone card customer service and got a guy most likely on some other continent. He looked back on the records. "Yes, on June 28 there were over 300 minutes on the card. Oh yes, and I see the 1200 added there as you said."

"Okay," I reply, "Can you explain to me where all those minutes could go? She hasn't used that much, and 300 plus 1200 equals 1500." 

"Yes," the guy replied, " That's what I'm saying, one thousand, five hundred minutes."  I began to get exasperated. "Where could those minutes have gone? In my math, 300 plus 1200 is 1500, not 1000. How could she have used 450 minutes just like that?"

"Ma'am," came a polite, patient reply, " That's what I'm saying. 300 plus 1200 makes 1500 minutes. You have 1500 minutes on the card."

How embarrassing. When I made the call with the card, that's what the operator had been saying.  "One thousand five hundred minutes."  All along I was hearing "1,050 minutes."

I don't find it difficult to laugh at myself. "Oops ! I suppose I've made your day," I joked, "...this is a phone call you'll go home and tell about tonight--the erratic, insane, mathmatically-challenged woman."

"No problem ma'am ... well, yes, it is a little funny."