My brief stint as a telephone psychic

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Ever been tempted to call a phone psychic? Well don’t. Especially not in Seattle. My friend is a telephone psychic there.

This is the girl who, while in college, had the used car she had just bought blow a cylinder while driving home from the lot. The same girl who’s fiancée not only left her, not only leave her for another man, but left her for her OTHER former boyfriend. This is the same girl who quit her franchise-sales job at the then unknown Starbucks Coffee because “It was going nowhere, I mean really, coffee?”. Should she really be giving advice to anyone except as first hand examples of things NOT to do?

So anyway, she supplements her painting career with a somewhat marginal coffee shop job and with telephone psychic work. Poor misguided folks call up, somebody somewhere gets a credit card number, and they get transferred to her. She tells them she is a “Clairvoyant” (ha!) asks for their “Starsign” (?!?) and proceeds to give a bunch of really vague predictions, “I see somebody ill in your family” or “I see you have just broken up a relationship” etc. Well, after a few (more than a few, actually) glasses of wine she decided it would be fun to let me have a go. My first customer was an elderly woman.

“Hello, I’m Doctor Cromulence. How may I serve you?”

(Loud television in background.)

“Who?”

“Doctor Cromulence, master of forbidden arts. I am here to guide you.”

“Your not a devil worshipper, are you.”

“No, I got a degree in Liberal and Forbidden Arts at Cambridge (sound of fire alarm or oven buzzer in background) Hey, your cookies are burning”

“What?”

“Your cookies are burning!!”

“Oh, my nutbread!”

(Extended wait, sound of oven opening, clanking. I’m wiping tears from my eyes and trying to compose myself.)

“Wow, that was amazing! How did you do that?”

“Cromulence sees all. And I Doctor Cromulence see that if you don’t start wearing your hearing aids your going to get hit by a bus.”

“That’s right! I don’t wear them because the batteries run down so fast!”

“I see you crossing an intersection, slowly, because of your hip, and you get hit by a school bus you didn’t heard coming.”

“They just drive so crazy these days.”

“Yes, they do. So wear your hearing aids and you’ll be fine. (sound of “Young and the Restless” in background) Hey, your stories are starting.”

“Oh, thank you! Your very good at this.”

“Thanks.”

So anyway, keep grandma away from the four-dollar-per minute phone psychics because very few of them have the mystical psychic power nessasary to prevent needless bus accidents or rescue your nutbread.

2

Dr. Cromulence, you should share your gift with the rest of the world. Do not deny that your powers can benefit all of mankind…wait I have to cut this short, my cookies are burning(!).

3

This is hilarious. True story, or do you just have a way with a yarn?

4

I really should know better by now than to drink while I’m reading the SDMB.

Eat right, exercise daily, live clean, die anyway.

5

Well you just saved me twenty bucks!

“pluto … a seriously demented but oddly addictive presence here.” – TVeblen

6

I would really, really love to get one of those jobs. I wish I knew how to get hooked up with a phone psychic company.

Once when I was pulling third shift, I ventured into a psychic chatroom on AOL. Evidently the resident psychic was off that night because I was able to take over and convince everyone it was actually my room. I gave several “readings” in the room and several in private, and it seemed that everyone there took the whole thing quite seriously. When I was done having fun with the losers, I told some guy his wife was having an affair with a coworker of his. He was honestly broken up about it. I guess I shouldn’t have, but sometimes I just can’t help myself.

7

Great story, Inkz! You do have a way with a tale.

I used to read Tarot cards just for amusement, and I got to be rather good at it. People will nearly always tell you what they want to hear; picking up on it is just a knack. But the second time I had someone get very upset by a “reading” – in spite of my reassurances that it was all nonsense – I decided not to do it anymore.

Catrandom

8

I worked as a telephone psychic - for one night. This was during my college days, and I thought it would be a fun job.

Boy, was I wrong. I did get a lot of calls from people looking to get a laugh, or looking for lottery numbers. Those calls were easy, I just gave them a load of BS, and they didn’t keep me on the line too long, because they just wanted the free three minutes.

The heartbreakers were the calls I got from people who were in serious pain, just looking for somebody to listen. I tried to give them the best advice, but I was in way over my head. I felt like a complete asshole, these people were so lonely and being taken advantage of.

One night was all that I could take, it just felt too slimy to continue.

Jane, if you really want to go into this line of work, you can probably find an ad for it in the back of of one of those free weeklies, that’s where I found out about it. It’s been a while, but I was paid so much per minute, plus an extra $.25 or so for signing people up for one of those frequent caller plans. I belive it worked out to 8 or 9 dollars per hour, but you have to pay your own taxes. Or, you could probably just call up one of those psychics and ask, since I believe it’s one of those things were you get extra money for having somebody work under you, like Amway.

9

Cat,
Maybe you were going for the wrong audience. Have you ever seen the movie Mall Rats? Hint: Buy a fake ‘third’ nipple (or fourth if you already have a nubbin!) and rub it while you give your predicitons. That’s where your mystical powers come from!

What a hoot.

Enright3

“You tryin’ to tell me Jesus Christ can’t hit a curve ball?” - Eddie Harris(Major League)

10

Damn, I hate spelling errors. I haven’t typed anything accurately all week!

predictions!

11

jane_says writes (that seems an unesthetic phrase):

If you have to ask, you’re not qualified for the job :slight_smile:

It is often said that “anything is possible”. In fact, very few things are possible, and most of them have already happened.