People who call over and over again to ask questions

What time is the Super Bowl?

 

How come the Braves aren't on channel 23?

 

Guy in Durham ALWAYS needed to know who qualified 24th in that week's NASCAR race. Didn't care about anything but that, but called every Friday night. Guess he played some weird NASCAR Fantasy game and couldn't wait for the print edition.

 

Someone called asking for a score and when I accidentally credited the winning score to the losing team, he got upset because he already knew the score but didn't come out and say it.

 

In my early days in Fort Lauderdale we had Ralph the Yankee fan. He sounded at least 80 and called every day in the late afternoon, usually to rip George Steinbrenner (this was the late '80s-early '90s after his decisions had screwed up the franchise). Ralph was friendly and we were polite to him, but he'd keep rambling and at some point we'd have to say, "Gotta go," and hang up on him. The calls ended after a while, and we figured he'd died.

These weren't recurring, but two of my favorites were from the wee hours of Aug. 24, 1992, as Hurricane Andrew approached South Florida. The first guy asked if it was true that the Mets were about to trade David Cone. The second asked if Troy Vincent, then a Dolphins first-round draft pick who was out with an injury, would play in the next exhibition game.

 

I'd have said, "Uh, if you could crawl out of your fucking cave, you might come to grasp that there may not be a fucking exhibition game in this part of the country any time between now and November. As someone who would prefer to survive this storm, I'm going to hang up now and take cover. I suggest you do the same. But if the weather gods allow me any say in the situation, I'll remind them to dump extra water on your neighborhood."

 

One of the recurring funnies on Lou Grant is when he answered rando calls to the city desk. It was always spot on.

 

The modern version of these calls, which I remember with absolutely zero fondness, is people emailing or using our Facebook page (which sadly, I must monitor) to ask a question they could have answered themselves in about .01 of a second via The Google.

 

Are you working out of Moe's Bar? Bart calls there a lot.

 

Several years ago, we would get calls occasionally from the other side of the state from some old guy who would ask questions and never thank anyone for giving him answers. He wouldn't even say goodbye, just hang up after getting what he wanted. Sometimes someone younger would call from that same number to ask questions (like father like son?), only he'd more or less end up explaining the answer he was looking for. When I pointed out that he answered his own question, he got mad, swore at me and hung up.

 

I had a woman who would call almost weekly asking about what channels golf was on and get mad at me if a tournament wasn’t on or was preempted. Each time I explained to her that we just print the TV guide, we don’t schedule programming.

 

Or the people who would call us when the Braves weren't on channel 23. We would ask why they're calling us, as if we have anything to do with a station's programming. "Because they don't answer their phone and you do," was the answer.