We get phone calls for people other than ourselves pretty frequently. The first phone number we were assigned when we moved to GR showed up on everyones’ caller IDs as “Michael Flowers.” I believe it was after a very confusing call from someone in Chicago who really, really wanted me to give her Michael Flowers’ current phone number that I decided to call the phone co. on that one. Several months/more phone calls later, the phone co. decided they couldn’t fix the problem and assigned us a new number.
After that we started getting calls for Amy all the time; this culminated in Amy herself calling to ask if we could give them her new number. Thus I embarked on my new career as a message service. We still get calls for Amy (after this # has been all ours for at least a couple of years), but lately we’ve been getting calls for some mysterious new entity as well.
Last week we got a message from a fellow who wanted a “brochure” from some company he was trying to call–the name of it sounded like “Amumblemumblemumble.” (By the way, I’ve noticed that when people are leaving phone messages, they tend to mumble information that is very familiar to them, like their own names. I’m sure I do that at least as much as anyone else does, but in my secretarial avocation this leads to problems when taking messages: “Um, Muhmumble called and wants you to call him back, his number is 555-82mumblemumble”).
Sometimes I ignore these calls, but other times I call the person back to let them know their message didn’t reach its intended hearer. I did that today with the brochure guy.
It has occasionally happened on these calls that people want me to give them the new number of the person that they are trying to contact. Now, I hate to cloud the issue by the fact that I do indeed have Amy’s new number; but in general, how on earth would I know contact info for the previous holder of the phone number that was randomly assigned to me?
The brochure guy seemed confused, like most recipients of my well-intentioned corrective calls do, but he also kind of tried to argue with me. “Well, I was trying to reach Amumblemumble. This is the number I was given.”
I wonder what he was expecting? That I would crumble and admit that I was actually a representative of the Amumblemumble company all along, and promise to send out his brochure immediately?
Haha, he won’t get me to admit my complicity with Amumblemumble that easily. Nice try, brochure guy, but you’ve got to get up pretty early in the morning to fool Michael Flowers–I mean Amy–I mean, um, yeah, me.