My Early Birthday Gift

This is one of those stories where everyone says "Awwww" at the end. The good kind of aww.

As I've mentioned before, my husband works in the food industry. I tell him that as long as people eat, he has a job. For the most part this has been true; his sales may fluctuate from one month to the next but there's never been a time when he hasn't been able to make enough money to pay the bills. We're very thankful for that.

Still, the economy being what it is, his company has looked for ways to save money. Recently they switched cell phone companies. The contract the company had with Cingular expired, and they decided to go with Metro PCS. Yes, the service is less expensive, but it has its drawbacks.

As sales supervisor my husband has several salesmen working under him who he speaks with regularly while on the road. He also speaks with clients, supermarket owners and managers. So he spends alot of time on the phone. The issue he began having with the new service company is that inside the stores (especially in the freezer section, where most of his products are) he couldn't get a signal. This meant that his sales force couldn't get a hold of him, nor could his customers. He was also embarrassed every time someone from the competition was around and saw my hubby having to walk out the store just so he could make a phone call. It was hindering his productivity, and he wasn't happy.

At home, we've had Sprint for our phone service for several years and are happy with them. My hubby spoke with his bosses and asked if it were possible to switch his work phone over to our home phone service, with the company paying him whatever they were paying Metro PCS. He explained the problems he was having, and the company agreed to his request. So my hubby called Sprint and worked out a good plan with them that would work for his job and our personal phones.

A couple of days after he'd told me about this, I received an email from Sprint verifying the purchase of a new phone. Sprint has my email address on file, so anytime a change is made they send me an email. Since my hubby had already told me he was adding his work phone to our account, I figured he was upgrading his phone also. I printed the email without really reading it, and left it on his nightstand. When hubby came home, he asked what the paper was for. I told him Sprint had emailed me a confirmation of his order and I'd printed it for him. He became very serious. "Why did they email you? I'm the one that placed the order." I explained that my email is the one they have on file. "But I never told them to email anything. What did they have to do that for?" I told him Sprint's system does it automatically, whether he requests an email or not. I couldn't understand why he was so upset about it. Then he told me. "I was buying you a new phone for Christmas, and Sprint ruined my surprise." Since I hadn't read the email, I didn't notice there were two phones ordered, one for him to use for work and an additional one. It was so sweet! I laughed because he was pouting like a little kid all because his surprise was discovered.

Now that I knew about the phone, my hubby asked me to fill out the paperwork for the rebate offers. Turns out, to qualify for the rebates the phones need to be activated by November 14. Since that's exactly a month before my birthday, we agreed the phone would be an early birthday gift. I get to learn how to use my burgundy Blackberry Curve now, and hopefully I'll have gotten the hang of it by the time my birthday rolls around. Thanks for my early gift, honey!