WTF?

Do you ever have one of those moments where you think you have completely lost your mind? Where you hear a rushing sound in your head as time comes crashing to a halt and your vision gets reduced into a fish eye while you are thinking, "Am I totally crazy? Or worse, really, really stupid?"

This just happened to me. I was on the phone with my company's new travel agency, getting flight times for an upcoming trip for one of my bosses. The conversation went like this :

Me : "Hello, my name is Penelope. I'm Mr. So-and-So's assistant and I'd like to get some flight times between either Paris and Moscow or Marseille and Moscow on May 1st."

Travel Agent : "What city will he be arriving to?"

Me (slightly perplexed, but overexplaining it as usual) : "He's not sure if he will be leaving from Paris or Marseille, so he'd like to compare the options to arrive in Moscow on the evening of the 1st."

Travel Agent : "Yes, but what city does he want? There are several."

Me : (briefly wondering if she is asking me whether he wants to arrive at Domodedovo or Sheremetyevo airport, but wonder why she didn't say 'airport'. Rushing sound, fish eye vision. I swallow hard.) "Moscow?" (I search in my head to find if there even exists a way I could mispronounce Moscow in French so as to be incomprehensible. I also wonder why on earth we changed agencies.)

Travel Agent (very huffily) : "Fine." (commences typing)

Me (can't help myself) : "Excuse me for saying this, but last I heard, Moscow was a city."

Travel Agent : (more furious typing, followed by a deafening silence) "Oh. I don't know what I was looking at."

Me (relieved to be actually sane) "That's okay. So let's start with what you have arriving in the evening from Paris."

Why oh why did they change? American Express Havas, I miss you!

Plus, when you get huffy because there are a bunch of words you don't know how to pronounce on your screen? Maybe you shouldn't be a travel agent. Just saying.