Unwanted phone calls can be fun.

You know, you have to wonder about the people they have soliciting over the phone. You know who I mean. I mean the people that call you to get you to vote for certain candidate, or donate to a special charity or clean your chimney or gutters or sell you replacement windows, and so on. The list is endless. And they almost always seem to pester you at inconvenient times, like when you are having dinner, or getting ready for bad. Oh you can put yourself on the “Do Not Call” list. But it doesn’t work. I used to get annoyed by these calls. I would take that annoyance out on the unsuspecting solicitor. I got yelled at more than once by my family for doing that. Then for a while I would just hang up. Sometimes I tried to have some fun and see how long I could keep them talking. Every now and again, one would catch me with my guard down and I’d end up in a nonsensical conversation.

I was sitting around the house one night just minding my own business when the phone rang. I picked it up and a voice said “Joe?” I answered”Yes, who’s this?” The guy on the other end of the phone goes, “Joe, I can help you Joe.” I again asked, “Who’s this?” This guy then said, “Joe, Joe, I can help you Joe, I can really help you.” I said “Who is this and what do you want?” The response was, “I can help you Joe”. The guy went on to say, “I came by to see your lawn and I can help you, I really think I can help you.” At the time I got this call, my yard looked like it was used to test missiles. To say it was torn up would be an understatement. I had big piles of dirt everywhere (I’d just had the addition put on), there were tire ruts all over the place. I hadn’t weeded the lawn in years. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t really a lawn in the first place. It was more just, really short weeds. I learned a long while ago that weeds are hardy. During the dog days of summer when everyone else’s grass is all burnt and brown, my weeds are nice and green. And from a distance, it looks like lawn. This guy on the phone was telling me he’s seen my lawn and can help me. He started telling me he came by to look at it. I’m curious about what he thinks I have and what he can help with. So I asked him what he thinks he can help me with and that I’m not paying him to come cut my grass. He told me I misunderstood. I asked him how much lawn he thinks I have. He said about 10,000 square feet. I responded to him that I have two acres, of which, about 50,000 square feet of it is lawn and that there was no way I’m paying him to cut it. He again said I misunderstood. At this point, I asked a fateful question. I asked “just what do I misunderstand?” His response was that he wanted to spread around some weed killer then fertilize my lawn. I blurted out, “Wait a minute, there is no way I’m going to pay you to fertilize my lawn so that I have to cut it” (heavy emphasis on a long drawn out I). He started going on and on about the “value” of a good lawn. It’s at this point that I explained to him that as long as the lawn passes the basketball test, I don’t need to cut it. He asked a couple of times about the basketball test, so I explained it to him. I explained that if I can roll a basketball onto the lawn and still see it when it’s out there, then the lawn does not need cutting. I went on to explain that the weeds don’t grow very fast or tall and that’s a good thing. It means I don’t have to cut the lawn very often. At this point I asked him just why I would want him to kill the weeds and feed the lawn so that the grass grows fuller and taller and I end up having to cut it more often. After all, cutting the lawn is work and I don’t like to work. The voice offered up that he could cut my lawn if I wanted. I explained that this last comment brought the conversation full circle and that there is no way I’m paying anyone to cut my two acre lawn. Next thing I heard was “click” then dial tone.

Of course, then there are the times when you just want to have some fun.

The other night the phone rang. I picked it up. The caller asked to speak to Lisa. I asked “who’s calling.” I was provided a name (let’s call him Bob). I asked what the call is regarding. Bob said he’s calling to talk about a specific political candidate. Without getting up from the couch or shielding the phone’s receiver, I yelled for Lisa. She yelled back “WWHHHAAATTTTT!!!!” I told her she had a call. She yelled “who is it?” I yelled “It’s “Bob”. She yelled “Who’s Bob?” I yelled that he was from the office of XYZ candidate and he wanted to talk to her about her vote. She responded that she didn’t want to take the call. I had not even tried to mute the receiver. I had just held it far enough away so that I wasn’t yelling directly into it. Naturally, Bob could hear both sides of this exchange. At this point I got back on the phone and said “Ah Bob, I just spoke to Lisa, and she wants me to tell you, she’s not here.” Bob stammered a little bit and asked “When will she be back?” I again moved the receiver away and yelled, “He wants to know when you’ll be back.” I give it a second then got back on the phone and said “Bob, she wants me to tell you that she left yesterday before I got home from work so I don’t know where she is or when she’ll be back. She wants me to tell you that I think she’s at her mother’s” Bob couldn’t hold it any longer, he started to laugh. He was laughing so hard he could barely talk. He thanked me for my time and hung up.

What I am starting to be surprised at is the persistence of the “professional” telemarketers. You can’t rattle some of them. Sure, some can tell they are being hosed and hang up quickly. The guys that try to sell the extended car warranties, they don’t fool around. My goal is to try and keep them on the line for as long as possible. I have yet to make a minute. I don’t know what kind of BS filter they have, but it’s good. Others don’t seem to care. It appears that as long as you are on the phone, they have a sales opportunity and they won’t let go.

After we paid off all the credit cards and got rid of all but one, we used to get tons of calls from every bank under the sun. They were all trying to get us to take more cards. I tried everything to get them to stop calling. Nothing worked. One day, an exceptionally pushy woman called to offer us a Discover card. I let her go through her whole sales pitch. I then told her I would be glad to let her fill out the application and that I’m surprised they had called me. She asked why I was surprised. I very matter of factly explained that the legal proceeding from their law suit against me had only just been settled. I said I was surprised because, their lawyer seemed to be kind of mad. He seemed upset that they were only able to recoup about 10 cents on the dollar from me. This woman didn’t care. She started asking me application questions. As we were filling out the application, I asked her who’s going to pay for the damage. She asked about damage. I said “the damage the repo men did to the trailer when they came for the stereo and TV.” She said she didn’t know, and went on with the application. She wanted to know how much credit I needed. I told her $1m. She asked about my job, I told her I’m unemployed. She asked about outstanding loans, I told her the bankruptcy cleared that all up, I have none. She asked about my assets, I told her I’m renting the trailer but that as soon as I scratch up enough moola, I’m going to get the Gremlin back up and working. That should be worth some money. She asked about references, I told her she could talk to my wife. She asked about the wife’s job. I told her the wife picks up “odd jobs” out on the streets. There was the obligatory education question. I told had I had some high school, and that I was studying for my GED while I was awaiting trial. After the while, I started saying that it was really nice that they were going to extend me more credit given all that we had just been through, what with them losing so much money on me and all. This woman did not care. All she wanted was me to authorize her to apply for a credit card in my name. Ultimately, she won. I finally had to hang up on her. She didn’t care what I had to say, she just wanted that applications submitted. Though I had a lot of fun weaving my tale of dysfunction, this phone rep won the battle, I’m the one that hung up.

For shear persistence though, my hat goes off to the collection agency that was looking for Judy Castille. Judy, if you’re out there, the collection agency wants to talk to you.

Judy bought a car. Apparently, it was a nice new car. Unfortunately, Judy also decided that she really didn’t need to pay this nice new car. Eventually, Judy’s loan was put out for collection. Unfortunately, the collection agency had/has the wrong phone number. Somebody transposed a couple of digits. They had/have the area code backwards. The number on the application is/was correct. Unfortunately, whoever programmed the autodialer for phone system did it wrong. Let’s say the area code should have been 805, what they entered into the dialer was 508. The rest of the number was good. Using the wrong area code game them my home number.
The collection agency has been looking for Judy for over three years.

At first, I was nice when they called. I would nicely explain that they had a wrong number. Over time, all the civility of the interaction ebbed away.

These guys were/are persistent. Almost every day there would be a new message on the answering machine. Three or four times a week we’d get a call. These calls would come late after dinner, first thing in the morning, on the weekends, holidays it didn’t matter. We could get a call almost any time or date. Soon I started getting “cranky” with these people. At first, I tried to explain their error. Eventually, I got to the point where just would let them have it. It got so bad that my wife would race me to the phone, just so she didn’t have to listen to me rant and rave at these people. Hey, I was mad what do you expect? We don’t know a Judy Castille, but the Collection agency won’t take no for an answer. They kept calling, so I kept barking.

Eventually Lisa embarked on a quest to end the calls. After several days and multiple phone calls, Lisa announced she had solved the problem. All was again right with the world. She had escalated the problem up through the proper channels of management and we would no longer be getting calls for Judy. See, no yelling, no arguing no fighting. Just persistence and a pleasant demeanor and all is taken care of. How nice.

It was nice not getting calls as I was trying to drift off to sleep. I was reminded almost nightly. “You didn’t have to be mean to people”, “This is how you get things done”, “See how good this works, no more calls and nobody’s angry”. I heard that admonishment almost daily for a while. A very short while.

It took about three weeks for the calls to start back up. NOW, the wife couldn’t say anything to me. Her way hadn’t worked. Now I had free reign. These jamokes were in for some trouble. Every time I got on the phone, I let them have it with both barrels. Now I’m enjoying it because, no one at would dare say anything to me. I started looking forward to the calls.

Early one sunny Sunday morning the phone rang. As I raced to answer it before anyone else could I could hear my wife yelling “BE NICE, WE HAVE COMPANY!” My mother and sister had come to spend the weekend. Please understand that it’s about 9:00 on a Sunday morning. Everyone sitting around the kitchen table still in their jammies sipping coffee and debating which mass we were going to attend. I answered the phone and the voice on the other end asked”May I speak to Judy Castille?” I responded something to the effect of “How many times do I have to tell you people, Judy doesn’t live here?” As this disembodied female voice starts to say something, I heard my mother say “Joseph, be nice. It’s Sunday morning.” So I back it down a notch in deference to my mother. I asked if the line was recorded. The voice responded that sometimes it was. I asked the woman on the other end of the line to please make sure it was because I had something to say. After a second or two the woman came back and again asked to speak to Judy. At this point I launched into a monologue about how they had an error in their phone system and were calling the wrong number. I told them that they had entered the wrong area code. I chided them for not fixing their problem. All the while my mother and wife are in the background telling me to leave this poor woman alone. My sister on the other hand was seeing the humor in the whole situation. The woman I am speaking to then asks why I won’t let her speak to Judy. I asked if she was listening to me. She said she was and asked if I knew how to get a hold of Judy. I responded that I didn’t. The woman then asked if I knew Judy’s correct phone number. I told her they had it correct on their forms, they just input it into their phone system incorrectly. The woman then asks me if I know how that happened. I responded something to the effect of “How the heck would I know. It’s your system, ask someone who works there.” The woman now says that it’s not her system she doesn’t know anything about it. She again asks for Judy and inquires why I won’t let her talk to her.

At this point I changed tactics. I said to this woman “OK, if you won’t believe me that Judy doesn’t live here, how about this? OK. Ready? Here goes. Hello, this is Judy how may I help you?” At this point everyone in the kitchen started roaring. They’d been listening to me argue with this woman for 10 minutes, this sudden change in approach seemed to really catch them off guard. Not the woman on the phone though. She immediately introduced herself and started to explain that I was behind on an almost $20,000 car loan and that they were looking for a payment. Not the response I was looking for but OK, I’ll play along. My response was that I was not going to be making a payment. The woman asked why? I told her because I had lost the car. I shouldn’t be paying for a car I don’t have. The woman asked how I lost the car. She wanted to know if the bank had already taken it. I said no, I said it was just gone. The woman asked if I knew where it was. I responded that if I knew where it was, it wouldn’t be lost. She then explained to me that it doesn’t matter that I lost the car, I still owed the money. At this point, I said to her “You do know that I’m not Judy, right?” She said, “OK, yes I understand. Why aren’t you making your loan payments?” My response was, “I can’t, I don’t have any checks.” She then asked if I had a debit card. I said yes. Her immediate response is that I can pay with that, just give her the number off the card. I again said, “You do realize I’m neither Judy nor a woman. Right?” She said yes, and to go ahead and read her the debit card number. I asked her how many numbers she wants. She said she wanted all the numbers s off the card. I asked how many is that, she said she didn’t know and that the numbers should be on the front of the card. At this point I told her I don’t really have a debit card. She said she was ready and to start reading off the numbers. I thought to myself, what the heck and start repeating numbers: 5, 7, 3, 4, 6. I said whatever number I could think of. After I recited a handful, I asked if she had enough. The woman said she didn’t know and asked how many are on my card. I again told her that I don’t have a card, I don’t know how many numbers there are and that I’m not Judy. Her response was that she thought she needed a few more numbers. At this point, I yelled over to the people having coffee in my kitchen “hey does anyone know how many numbers are on a debit card?” I got no response. I then asked the folks in my kitchen to help me make up numbers. At this point, the woman on the phone asked me if I really had a debit card. I started to laugh and said “HELLLLO, I’ve told you three times, no I don’t have a debit card and I’m making up the numbers. Why do you think I’ve been asking you how many numbers there are?” At this point, I think dawn broke on marble head. The woman responded, “OK, so you don’t have a debit card, do you have a credit card? You can make the payment with a credit card.” Now I’m dying. I can barely breathe. After a second or two I collect myself enough to ask the woman “So let me get this straight, you know that Judy is not paying her bills and has had a loan put out to collection. You’re trying to collect on that loan aren’t you? You also know that for the last 10 minutes I’ve been making up debit numbers to give you and that I’m not really Judy. You’re seriously asking for a credit card number? If I was really Judy, do you think I’d have a valid credit card? And since you know that I’m not Judy and that I just made up a bunch of numbers for the debit card, what makes you think I’ll give you valid numbers for a Credit Card. You’re not serious are you? You are recording this conversation aren’t you? I couldn’t make this stuff up. This is unreal.”

My mother was looking at me in a state of shock. Her mouth is agape and her eyes are popping. She’s speechless. My sister, well she’s on the floor. She’s roaring, tears are rolling down her cheeks. And what about Lisa? Lisa’s just shaking her head. The kids left the room at “Hello?” They’re the smart ones.

Round about this time, the woman on the phone started to get it. She tried one more time to get me to pay the bill. She asked me for my checking account and bank number. It was a half hearted try. My response to her request was “are you kidding me, you’re not serious are you?” At this point she thanked me for my time and disconnected the call. When I got off the phone, my mother advised me that I should go to confession before I next took communion.

After this call, I thought I was done with Judy Castille. I hadn’t heard from anyone concerning Judy in about a year. This morning I listened to a voice message from a lawyer. Apparently they are suing Judy. The Lawyer said that this was a serious matter and he wanted to talk to Judy before it went any further.

I wonder how much fun I’m going to have when he finally gets a hold of me.