Well, that was an odd phone call

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
121

Not long after I started my first job, I got a call at home from a sultry, breathless-sounding woman. I’ll call her ‘Mahoney’:

Mahoney: “F?”
Me: “Yes?”
Mahoney: “Guess who!?”
Me: “Uh, I’m sorry… I’m afraid I don’t recognize you.”
Mahoney: “Think of Aspen…”
Me: (I’ve never been to Aspen, or been skiing, in my life) “Uh, I’m afraid I still don’t know you”.
Mahoney: “This is F. Shakespeare, right?”
Me: “Yes.”
Mahoney: “And you don’t know me?”
Me: “Uh, no”.
Mahoney: “Oh, all right… This is Sue”
Me: (The only Sue I know is my sister-in-law, and she never sounded like this woman) “Uh, I’m sorry…”
.
.
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Now you have to understand, my new job involved a top-secret clearance. And I had just been given the standard read-in on how all these sneaky Ruskies would try anything to get information out of me. So with my clipped responses, it took several more minutes to figure out that Breathless was looking for a completely different individual, who happened to share my first and (quite unusual) last name.

My last name is also identical to a large commercial farmer in my town. They have a big sign with their name on it, but unfortunately, not their phone number. So I get a lot of calls intended for them.

One morning, about 5 AM, I was awakened by a call from an old man with a country accent:

Me: “Hello?”
Old man: “Uh, is this… Shakespeare’s?”
Me: “Yeah”.
Old man: “Well, this is the circus, and we got about 2 tons of elephant manure and was wondering if you wanted it.”

I was still groggy, but not too groggy to realize that some jerk was playing a trick on me. I responded with as much restrained sarcasm as I could manage.

Me: “Uh, did you just pick my name out of the phone book, or are you some old enemy?”
Old man: (Sounding shocked) “Uh… ain’t this Shakespeare’s Farms?”
Me: “Oh, no, I’m sorry (finally realizing why he was calling), here’s their number…”

Fast forward to the present…

My real-life last name is also identical to a nationally known pizza chain, and there’s a franchise located literally one block from me. I get so many of their calls I have their number memorized. I’m thinking of putting it on my outgoing message: “You have reached XXX-YYY-ZZZZ. If you want to order a pizza, hang up and call XXX-YYY-ZZZQ. If not, leave a message”.

122

Your RL name is “Pizza The Hut”!
:eek: :smiley: :stuck_out_tongue:

123

My best friend’s younger brother, who was 16 at the time made an accidental phone call to his house from his cell phone. He must have hit redial without realizing it.
His mom picked up the phone while her son was in mid-conversation. Apparently, he was telling a friend about his stockpile of alcohol that he kept in his bedroom. He was telling him what dresser drawer he kept some of the booze in. By the time he arrived back home, his mom had ransacked his room, and had every bottle sitting out on the kitchen table when he walked in the door. Yikes.

124

Oh, and there’s a Gaylord Focker in my local phone book.

125

I recently came home to a 45-minute recording on my answering machine, from a friend on a political campaign. Apparently he had gone out door-knocking, and put his cell phone in his pocket. At some point, he managed to accidentally hit the button to speed dial my phone, my machine answered, and proceeded to record his conversations for the next 45 minutes.

P.S. Ya know, on an old answering machine with no ‘go to next message’ button, it can be real hard to erase a 45-minute message. You have to play to the end of the message, and then hit erase. And you can’t just let it play, since you need to hit erase within a few seconds of it reaching the end of the message. Might be time to get a new answerer.