People who call over and over again to ask questions

One of our repeat callers called in earlier today asking for the date, time and channel of the Super Bowl. Then later he calls from another number (he does that a lot) asking for the date, time and channel of the Super Bowl, but this time he gives the answers in the form of a question: "Fox?"

This guy also calls all season long asking for the score of the baseball game and how so-and-so performed. Must be a huge fan if he won't watch any of these games on TV or listen on the radio but has to call the paper 162 times. However, the timing of these calls are suspicious, almost as if he watches the game, then calls us afterward to ask questions he already knows the answers to. I might have to give him a wrong score one of these days just to see if he corrects me.

We have numerous callers like this, to the point where we know what question will be asked before we pick up the phone just from their caller ID. Some of us think they're just lonely.

 

In the days before the internet, my shop used to get phone calls from guys asking us to look up the answer to a question that would settle a bet.

 

People call us all the time to ask similar things.

But I work at a library.

 

At one of my old stops we ran college football scores on the top of the Sunday front page People would bet where certain teams would show up and they called us during the shift, offering us a cut if we put their team on the line they wagered.

 

If you have caller ID, don't answer them. They may be lonely, but you're at work.
Where else in the private sector is it OK to call and disrupt somebody's job? Nowhere.

 

I used to get hand written letters from a woman I presumed to be elderly. Her penmanship was peerless. She didn’t have internet and would tell me who her favorite retired pro athletes were, and in each letter ask me about them. “What’s Phil Simms up to these days?” “What ever happened to Bo Jackson?”

When I had a spare moment, I would then type out short replies and send them back. I haven’t heard from her in years, though, so my guess is that unfortunately she may have died.

 

I get called almost nightly with nagging questions too, but they're not about sports and they're from my fiancee. I don't dare to not pick up.....

 

We got those bar bet calls in the pre-Internet era. The one that used to tick me off was the guy who would call and ask if we had the East Bumfuck vs. West Bumfuck score. Invariably if we said we didn't have that score yet, he would say "I have that score. It was East Bumbuck 68, West Bumfuck 46." So why the hell did you call?

And, of course, we had the guy on staff who got pissed off one day and told two guys who called with a bar bet different answers to the same question. And then there was the obvious gambler who called complaining that a college basketball score from halfway across the country a couple of weeks ago was wrong in our AP scorelist "and you cost a lot of people money."

 

You'd actually be surprised how often customer service people deal with it.

 

They'd ask me to settle a bet. I'd ask, "How much do I get to give you the answer."

Years ago, McDonald's was doing a sports trivia game. We got calls all the time from people seeking answers. Then one day, we got a package that was filled with coupons for McDonald's stuff. The note said they realized we were getting buried by calls because of their game. Sorry.

A friend who worked at the Honolulu Advertiser told me they frequently got calls in the evening for trivia answers and they were always about Philadelphia teams. Finally, one guy asks why they were so interested in Philadelphia sports. The caller said, "Because I'm in Philadelphia. I figured you were the only sports department still open this late."

 

Pretty sure Steve Buscemi played this guy in the movie version called "Billy Madison."