Alooooooooooha!

I related this happening earlier today - and thought I'd share it here, too.

Some advance facts:
(1) My dad has a fast (and somewhat twisted) sense of humor. I still haven't met anyone who can find the funny quicker than he can, even after a stroke and a heart attack.
(2) My parents have had the same phone number for all my life.
(3) A long time ago, before Al Gore invented the Internet, people used to have to make reservations over the phone.
(4) An even longer time ago, companies would run contests to thank their customers for their patronage. This was known as "customer service". I know - hard to grasp that one, right?
(5) There was a large-vehicle rental company in town for several years who, apparently, had a phone number that was a digit away from my parents phone number.

Ok - dem's da' facts. Here we go...

Over a particular weekend, this woman kept mis-dialing while trying to rent a moving truck ... from my folks. So she'd call, Dad would answer with "hello?" She'd say "oh, this isn't WeLug?" Dad would say "no", and she'd hang up. But she'd wait like 40 minutes or more before trying again (dunno why) so Dad just started answering the phone "WeLug - how may I help you?" that weekend. Our friends were confused but just figured my Dad was pulling a joke.

So finally the phone rang, Dad answered "WeLug - how may I help you?" and the woman started to place her order, but Dad stopped her. "Wait a sec - hey Hank - is this the call? It is? Great - Madam - you're our 1,000th customer this month. You've just won an all expenses-paid week in Hawaii" and he then went into great detail about where she and her guest would be staying, which airline they'd be flying, the luau that they'd enjoy, the sites they'd see, etc. It was a thing to hear. He was REALLY selling it. At first, she was absolutely not believing it but, by the 6th minute of discussion, she was damn near packing her bag.

Finally, my dad said "so what we need for you to do is come down to our offices in the next two hours - can you do that? - and walk through the door and shout 'Aloha' as loud as you possibly can. We'll have our district manager, Frank, there to present you with a certificate and our staff photographers will be taking your photo, we'll need you to sign off on that of course. But yeah - just shout 'Aloooooooha', ok?" He got her name, and her shirt size (so they could put a Hawaiian shirt on her for their monthly newsletter, of course), and said to expect the staff to act surprised when she walked through the front doors.

I still don't know how we kept from going down there to watch this woman waltz through the doors, grinning from ear to ear and shouting "Aloooooooha"! We didn't though - watching the actual occurrence couldn't possibly have been any better than the mental image of her doing so.