I was working at my family restaurant the other night when I got a weird phone call.
Whenever someone calls in, I always answer " restaurant name, what would you like tonight?"
That night, the guy on the line asks “Is this restaurant name?”
Me: Yes it is.
Him: What’s the phone number there?
Me: Uh…what?? The phone number?
Him: Yeah, the number. The PHONE number. What is it there?
I gave it to him and he said thanks, and hung up.
Am I naive or don’t you have to type in the phone number to call a place? Even if it’s programmed on someone’s phone, can’t you get the number by editting it? How could he call our restaurant without having the phone number??
As far as witnessing abject stupidity goes, yesterday I was on a busy 4-lane road with heavy traffic moving at 45-50 mph, a few cars up ahead a teenager on a bicycle came flying down a side street and without even looking or slowing down rode across all four lanes of traffic to the other side.
As I mentioned in another thread a couple weeks ago I saw a guy riding his bicycle at night without lights, on a highway, while wearing all black and talking on the phone.
I did a weird phone call one once. I had just moved into a place and didn’t know that the landline had already been connected but it unexpectedly rang. I answered the phone but since I had no idea of the number the call couldn’t be for me. I ended up asking the caller what my number was. He thought that was very strange until I explained it.
Isn’t it possible that the person calling the restaurant was doing a redial from a landline. I know on my home phone that you can redial the last number dialled but you can’t see what the number is.
The stupidest thing I’ve witnessed lately was also the most malicious, and I was the victim.
A friend and his wife are splitting. Two days ago, she poured some sort of powder, most likely sugar, into our gas tank because we are refusing to take sides. (Which she seems to translate as “We’re taking his side by default.”)
I really feel like calling her and saying, “We see the light now! Your vandalism showed us that you were the one in the right all along! Such a great person like you. . . How could we have been so blind?”
Not necessarily. I’ve had cheap phones with no display that did have speed-dial. You can program in a number but there’s no way (unless you can interpret the tones) to find out what an already programmed number is.
I didn’t witness this, as I wasn’t working at the time, but it was related to me by a member of my crew:
They took a call for a structure fire, and immediately got everybody going. Fire department, ambulance, utility company, law enforcement for traffic control, and our boss, who comes out with towels and water for our fire folks whenever we have a full-fledged structure fire.
ONE HOUR LATER, long after everybody had gotten on scene, 911 rings again. It’s a neighbor, reporting that the house next door is on fire. Confused, the dispatcher asked him if he didn’t see the fire trucks outside. “Well, yeah, there’s fire trucks and some deputies and everybody out there…I just didn’t know if anyone had called 911 yet!”
We’re still wondering what, exactly, he thinks 911’s purpose is.
We have a tenant who has complained to three separate City agencies that she can’t use her kitchen because we won’t fix it. Lady, YOU set your kitchen on fire, and we’re waiting for the City to issue the permits so WE can fix it.
A guy gets a phone number from a gal that he met. He calls it and you answer. He is surprised to get a restaurant and not the gal. In his surprise he asks you to repeat himself to make sure he heard correctly. Then he asks you for your phone number to see if he dialed correctly of if he was given an incorrect number.
People come to the counter in the store where I work and ask if we sell cameras. The store’s name ends in “Cameras” and there are three shelves directly behind the counter with cameras on display.
There’s at least one of these in-duh-viduals per week.
I got a phone call from a lady whose son died in a homicide a year ago. Hard working staff got me the long closed file. She asks what’s new on the case. I explain we finished the autopsy eleven months ago; nothing else to come in. She asks me what’s new on the prosecution of the case. I explain that we and the DA are not the same shop, that they run their business and we run ours, that we have different bosses (they are city, we are state) and different budgets and different buildings three miles apart and…
She interrupts “I know, I didn’t call the medical examiner. I called the DA!”
I apologize. How did you get to my number? That lady up front told her to hold and switched her to me. That lady? Mrs. Washington? Yes, but SHE DID NOT CALL the MEDICAL EXAMINER, she called the DA, and dammit she knows the difference!
I apologize yet again, and ask her what number she called. She has some difficulty recalling it. Together we work it out. I am able to recite it with her. Because it’s the number to the medical examiner’s office. I explain this.
“Oh.”
Click.
Always get a call like this at three minutes to five on a Friday afternoon.
The shop doesn’t know what the substance was. They didn’t test it or anything. I suppose if I wanted to, I could have someone test it to find out what it was, but really, it doesn’t matter. Whatever it was, it made our engine sputter.
I figure it’d be sugar since this woman would likely chose the most commonly known form of car-tampering. She’s not exactly the type which does research.
