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November 30, 2004
Eastern Mountain Whore
When I moved to Manhattan last spring, I set up my home phone online. The robust Verizon website, among other things, allowed me to pick out my phone number from a select list. I like whole numbers, so I immediately chose the number with the "9860" extension.
9860 = nice, round, juicy, whole number.
It didn't take long to realize that whole isn't necessarily better. Apparently, my number belonged to the Soho Eastern Mountain Sports in its former life. That meant ANYONE - I repeat ANYONE - looking for camping equipment with an old phone book would reach me, not the store.
The first month I was very pleasant. I politely told people they had the wrong number, explained the situation, then gave them the correct number to the store. (Yes, I actually looked up the number under the warped hope that the more people I helped, the faster the calls would decrease. This was a wrong assumption.)
Then the calls began waking me up on weekends. Soon after, I began to realize that strangers looking for kayaks in NYC far outweighed friends who actually phoned me. At this time, I had no choice but to plug in the ole answering machine and screen all incoming calls.
Now, the message on my machine goes a little something like this: "Hi, I'm not home right now. Please leave a message, and I'll get back to you soon." Pretty obvious this is NOT EMS, right?
Unfortunately, not all people get it. The following is an approximate percentile breakdown of how EMS customers have responded upon hearing my message:
80% - Hang up (The correct action!)
10% - Leave a message like so: "I was looking to buy XXXXXX. Can you please call me back and let me know if you have it in stock?"
8% - Leave a message like so: "Hi. I was trying to reach Eastern Mountain Sports, but this doesn't sound like it. Sorry."
2% - Yell about a package that needed to be delivered to EMS. (This was from an angry UPS employee.)
...And for the first time ever, I received a message this weekend from someone...informing me...that I had the same phone number as Eastern Mountain Sports!! She told me she found the number on the web, and just wanted to let me know.
Sure this "news" was anything but groundbreaking. But after months of deleting empty messages, I was honestly touched by this selfless action. My faith in humanity was restored for a few hours.
Let's hope the recent release of the new Verizon SuperPages will ring in a new day for me.
Posted by Michele at November 30, 2004 10:27 PM
Comments
Girl, go on their website, find where your number is written and let EMS know they need to change it. I work in customer service and trust me, they'll be happy to know about this.
Posted by: at December 2, 2004 12:22 PM
Dang. that's annoying. Are you going to get a new number?
Posted by: :r at December 2, 2004 11:56 PM
Yeah, I thought about getting a new number, but I'm too lazy to update my contact list again. Besides, the answering machine really does a great job! Really...
Posted by: Michele at December 3, 2004 11:50 AM
