As some of you know, I work in a call center, so I talk to people all day long. Today, I took a call from a business in TX, and the caller’s voice reminded me of a girl with whom I went to high school – let’s call her Amy Jones*.
Amy has been on my mind a lot lately, because her older brother is one of my “friends” on Facebook and has been posting a lot of pictures of Amy. Amy died a few years ago of cancer.
During the course of taking an order here, we verify the first and last names of every caller (yes, it has actually helped a few of our customers bust employees for theft – people ordering stuff for their personal use on the company credit card or whatever), and this customer’s name was Amy Jones**. :eek:
It completely threw me off-guard, and I said, “whoa! I went to school with a girl named Amy Jones!” The customer laughed and commented how funny it was, she’d never heard of anyone else named Amy Jones before.
Mundane and pointless, I know, but kind of weird.
*Not her real name – her real name is a combination of a fairly common first name and somewhat uncommon last name
**Again, obviously not her real name, but she had the same name as my dead classmate.
I had something sort of weird like that happened a few years ago. I was at the YMCA with the kids I was a nanny for. They were on the swim team. While I was watching their swim practice I noticed a cute one year old baby girl in the shallow part of the pool. She was having a parent/baby class with her dad. I immediately thought that she looked like a friend of mine who is a 40 year old woman, and the only person I have ever known named Mara. It looked like it could be her child, if she had children.
One minute later a woman sat next to me, and we struck up a conversation, and I pointed out the cute baby. She laughed and said, “that is my daughter Mara, and my husband!”. :eek:
A few years ago I was flying to Hong Kong, and my ex had said it was our honeymoon in the hope of getting an upgrade (a lie). We transited through Manchester and while we were having a coffee, waiting for our flight, the tannoy called “Could Mr Jim Lastname please come to the information desk.”
“This is our upgrade!” we exclaimed in delight. So I went with a huge smile to get upgraded and found instead a very confused and disappointed looking guy talking to the ticketing agent, wielding his passport, also in anticipation of an upgrade.
I don’t have a tremendously common surname, and this guy was also called Jim Lastname. Thus the airline thought they’d double-booked and needed to reconfirm that they hadn’t.
The guy and I chatted on the plane for a while, the entire topic of our conversation being “Wow, you’re called Jim Lastname too!” Then discovered we had nothing else in common, and slunk off to our respective cattle-class seats.
How about a double coincidence.
A few weeks ago I was trying to find someone I played tennis with in high school. His name was (not his real name) John Chong. Couldn’t find him, oh well, no big deal. A about a week ago I was talking to my sister and she mentioned something about her pre-school teacher, Mrs Kwong. Kowng!:smack: That was his name, not Chong. That was the first coincidence, then in the same breath I realized “Hey, his mom was a preschool teacher…she was YOUR preschool teacher.” It all came back to me so fast.
That reminds me of when I was having a conversation with a friend about how he I felt it was a bad idea to move to New York City because IF there were ever a terrorist attack it would be a likely target. I was just being ridiculous, though. Neither of us ever actually expected what would happen just a few days later on September 11th.
Almost ten years ago, Mr. Athena bought a new car. He’d picked out a Honda CRV, which I thought was a goofy car. But this was before we were married, and I didn’t really have much say in the matter.
On the day he was going to pick it up, I was leafing through a magazine, and there was an ad for a Nissan XTerra. I thought to myself “Now there’s a much nicer looking car in the same class/price range as that dumb Honda. Why doesn’t he get one of those?”
A few minutes later the phone rang. He’d been on his way to the Honda dealer to pick up his CRV, and happened to pass a Nissan dealer. He saw an Xterra out front, and was intrigued, so he stopped. He ended up buying the XTerra and royally pissing the Honda guys off.
We still have the XTerra. Great little SUV for the price. And not dumb looking, like the CRV.
I had to call Sprint early one Saturday to get some cell phone stuff straightened out. The lady I spoke to was very nice and helpful and when we were done asked me “Are you originally from Boston?” I told her I was. She asked "Excuse me for asking, but is your name “MY CHILDHOOD NAME I HAVE NOT USED IN THIRTY YEARS.”
When I recovered I said “Well, it used to be about thirty years ago.”
See, when I worked at Sprint years ago, the first thing I asked before we went on the phones (just out of training) was, “what if we get someone we know on the phone?” I was told that since our call center was not routed to get calls from TN, the likelihood of that happening was slim, but just in case, we should transfer the call to a supervisor. The trainer said, “trust me, it’s not going to happen. I’ve been here for 5 years and not one person has had that happen.” My first night on the phones, third caller was my second cousin that lives in OR. My supervisor thought it was funny and it made a great story. Within 3 weeks of starting there, I had managed to speak to 3 family members and 5 friends living all over the country. They finally made an exception for me – I could take the calls if I knew the person, I just had to note the account for my supervisor.
Oddly enough, even though the company where I work now is local and we are an all-inclusive operation (call center, warehouse, admin is all one building) I have only taken 1 call from a customer that I know personally – my FIL’s wife.
This is the most astounding coincidence that’s ever happened to me. A couple of years ago I had to get new plates for my car, then I had to drop off some money I owed someone. The plates I got were “ABC1234” (not the real letters/numbers). Walking back to the car, I took a look at my new plates. Then I realized: the guy I owed money to . . . his initials were “ABC,” and the amount I owed him was $12.34.
