Dear dimwit on the phone

Dear Podunk Deadbeats basketball coach,

In the future, it would really be helpful if you called in your results immediately following your game instead of the next day.

Also, please have stats and records written down before you pick up the phone to call. I don't have all day to wait on the phone while you add up the stats for Paul Brickshooter and Bill Airball. Hell, you had a whole extra day to add them up.

And no, just because little Timmy finally got off the bench and scored his first-ever points of his career his name doesn't get to be mentioned.

 

Last week:
"What's the score of Team A's game?"
They play tomorrow night.
"Oh. How about Team B?"
They play tomorrow night.
"Team C?"
You're not going to like this answer.
"Why?"
(sigh)They play tomorrow night.
"OK, thanks."
(hanging up)That's one minute of my life I'm never getting back.

 

Had a caller complain about the lack of coverage, all season, of the local boys soccer team.

My coworker and I keep a tally board in this office for this very reason and when I informed her that the boys soccer team from Podunk has actually been covered five times, she changed her argument to "Well, that's not as many times as you've covered the girls team".

My response? "Actualy, ma'am, we've only covered the girls four times this season and with the boys having won a playoff game last night and playing another one Tuesday, all while the girls are out of the playoffs, that means there will be at least seven boys stories to the four girls stories."

She replied with "Well, um, I was having a bad day."

 

Can you tell me the attendance of the local university hockey game last night?

 

I'm just amazed you got some vindication and a bit of a backing down.

 

3,200, why?

 

Nine messages left on sports editor's phone this Sunday. All asking, "Where is my newspaper? When is it going to get here?"

No name, no phone number.

 

If he's the paper's only subscriber - and in this day and age, you never know - there's nothing wrong with it.

 

I get those, too, and I just forward them along to circulation. I always wonder how they get my number. Just picking it from the tagline at the bottom of my high school sports stories or just by chance when they punch some numbers at the employee directory portion of the phone system?

And about once a month I have a voicemail left about 4:30 a.m. from a woman who thinks my number is that of a local Burger King. She proceeds to fake cough and tell her boss that she's ill and will be late that morning. The call-back number doesn't work, so I feel bad knowing she probably gets in trouble for not calling in when she gets to work late that morning.

 

To be fair, she works at Burger King so she probably doesn't have all that great a life. Hell, she's probably not even sick and is just using the day off to watch TV and eat Pringles.

 

The correct answer is, "Are you serious?"

 

At my first newspaper job, my home number was one digit off from the local barbecue takeout joint. Once every few months my phone would ring and the first thing I'd hear after I said hello was "You still open?"