This happened a while back, but I never gave it a proper pitting.
I came home one day and found a message on my answering machine. Like a typical answering machine, I have it set up to give callers my name and the spiel that I can’t come to the phone right now, so please leave a message.
The message left on my machine was a conversation between a woman on the phone and a man in the background. The woman seemed stunned and amazed that my telephone had produced the instructions to leave a message. This directive seemed to baffle her, and she kept informing the gentleman in the background of this bizarre development. Their conversation went like this:
Confused woman: It told me to leem message.
Money-wanting Man in Background: I want my ten dollars.
Confused woman: It says to leem message.
Money-wanting Man in Background: I better get my ten dollars.
Confused woman: (Unintelligible) Leem message.
Money-wanting Man in Background: Ten dollars.
And on like this, until the message time ran out.
I looked on the caller I.D. It was someone I didn’t know, so I figured they had gotten a wrong number and would realize it sooner or later.
In the weeks that followed, I came home to find they had called again. This time, however, they didn’t leem message.
Then one day they called while I was home. I answered it, noting the name before I picked up. I said hello and explained that they must have the wrong number. This seemed to stun the woman even more, so that she could only hang up.
In the following weeks they continued to call. Not only that, but I started getting calls from someone who had the same last name but a different number. Apparently the erroneous number had metastasized within their family. I explained to the other caller that I didn’t know them, they didn’t know me, and that this was a wrong number.
The calls kept coming. Now, they would often hang up when I said hello.
So I did a reverse look-up of their phone number on switchboard.com. I found that the initial call came from “the projects” and the second caller was in a not-nice part of town.
Now I was concerned. Were they timing me to see when I was home?
The next time they called, I told them flatly: You have been calling the wrong number and I want it to stop. If you continue to call, I will call the police.
The calls kept coming. By now, this has been going on for months, with a call from one or the other about every week. They’d call and hang up. I’d call back and say “stop calling here.”
Now, I can understand that someone might get a wrong number programmed into a cell phone or telephone. But two people doing it? And not changing it when you know it’s wrong? And to keep calling it when you know it’s wrong? What kind of out-of-it, rock-stupid, oblivious-to-reality cretins does it take to keep doing this?
The final straw came when they once again called and hung up. I called back and said, this is the last time. I told you I was going to call the police and now you’ve fucked up once too often.
So I called the police. An officer came over and took the report. I showed him the backlog of calls on my caller I.D. He got in touch with them and gave them a warning.
The calls then ended. Well, almost.
I got one last call from the leem-message woman. She was stunned and outraged that I had called the police. She wanted to know why!
I told her that yes, I called the police, and I had TOLD her I would repeatedly. I told her that with the report on file and this call I could now press charges.
That was the last call from the moronic, imbecilic, rude, idiotic, backward, head-up-her-ass leem-message woman and her clan.
Bitch.
All I can say is, I hope you never got your ten dollars.