This morning my phone rang.
“Hello, Martyn speaking” I said in my posh phone answering voice.
After a seconds silence I hear a click and a thick accent begins to speak, what it said at first I am unsure but it sounded like “Hello, are you home right now?” It was definetly a question.
“What?” I enquired and yet more garbled words in response, this time it sounded like “Hello, am I speaking to the person who owns the phone?”.
“Who the hell is this and what do you want?” I politely enquired.
Click! The phone went dead.
Whoever this guy was he was behaving like a dick. No stomach for an argument. Or so I thought…
About an hour later the phone rang again. I suspected it was the same guy because in the last 10 years I have only ever received one call from someone without a CLI, and that was about an hour ago. So primed for another call from this guy who forgot to mark my number down as “hostile” I answered.
“Hello, Not the Association of Chief Police Officers, how may I help you?” I said, and yes the same accented garbled message began, the guy completely missing my welcome message. I turned the fan off and moved to a quiet area of the office so I could get what this guy was actually saying.
“Do you own the phone sir?”
“What? This one, the one you called me on?”
“Yes sir, are you speaking from your own phone?”
“What are you accusing me of? Do you think I nicked it?”
“Oh no sir! I am sorry, I didn’t meaning to have misleading you!”
I am pissed off with this time waster now, his grammar and accent are really beginning to bug me (call me xenophobic if you must but by now I realised this was turning into phone spam). So I interrupted his flow of apologies.
“What do you want? My phone or what?”
“Sir, I am just wanting to ask you [garbled words again]“
“Can you speak clearly please I cannot make out what you just said”
“Sir, I am just wanting to ask you [garbled words again]“
“Chrissakes man! Who do you want to speak to?”
“The owner of the phone you are using”
“What is his name?”
“I don’t know” and before I could say anything else he rushed into his pitch
“We are taking surveys today and I would like to be asking you some questions, is that ok?”
“No it damn well isn’t you twonk, not unless you take the time to learn English. Now do yourself a favour, take the number you just dialled off your calling list because the next time you might not find me so pleasant”
‘Click’
Remembering what my ‘ol grandma once told me I dug around in the kitchen man-draw and found my pea-whistle. Oh how I look forward to his next call.
