Today a receipt was delivered to my mailbox for the $5 donation I recently made to your organization. This is the same donation that I make every year because you have lovely little old ladies and pitiful students call me to make the request. I understand that you want to get your giving percentages up and that these lovely people will continue to call me until I snap, so I’ve entered into a tacit agreement with you that I will give you $5 each time they call and in return you will not have them call me again until the following year.
There has been one problem with this system since its induction three years ago: MY NAME IS NOT NOR HAS IT EVER BEEN MRS. MATTHEW W. CONNOLLY. Let me repeat that in simpler terms case you couldn’t quite take that in all at once: MY NAME IS NOT MRS. MATTHEW W. CONNOLLY. I have never told anyone at your organization my husband’s name, so this becomes all the more curious because it appears that you have done some sort of detective work to arrive at this information.
I have made repeated attempts to correct this error with your development office. I have a really hard time understanding why this is so difficult for you to comprehend. If you’re going to put an erroneous name on a receipt that you intended to send to me, you could at least put, oh I don’t know, Shannon Rebecca Woolf, you know, since that’s the name that WAS PRINTED ON THE DIPLOMA I RECEIVED FROM YOU. You never seemed to have a problem with properly billing me for my classes during my tenure in Greenville, so you’d think it wouldn’t be that hard to properly bill me for my COMPLETELY VOLUNTARY benefaction. Especially since when you call you know to ask for Shannon Connolly and you seem to have no problem with the use of a credit card attached to the same name.
I have tried to correct this problem with people over the phone for the past several years. Each time I think I’ve conquered the beast I receive another statement with someone else’s name on it. I will contact your offices tomorrow to try, once again, to rectify the problem. If this isn’t possible I will discontinue my generous donations in the future. After all, I’m the parent of a toddler and living by example is very important. When Liam doesn’t follow directions he is promptly placed in time-out. If you can’t follow directions, I will be forced, from a consistency standpoint, to place you there as well. Indefinitely.
Love,
Shannon W. Connolly