Published Oct 23, 2003
At this new job I have I make tons of phone calls, which is fine, but I have to dial 9 to get an outside line, and I’m not used to that. I keep on dialing numbers without dialing 9 first, and fortunately haven’t yet been connected to any of my cow-orkers.
In college, I lived in the dorms (as did almost everyone), and you could dial other dorm rooms with a 5-digit extension or dial 9 for an outside line. Our local pizza deliverer was Round Table; one of the dorm room lines had the same number as the first 5 digits of the Round Table number. So, every year (particularly for the first few weeks), the unlucky posessor of this number would be inundated with calls for delivery. More than one resident cursed with this number took to answering the phone “Round Table, can I take your order please.” Of course they didn’t pass the order on or anything; they just took all the information, hung up and forgot about it. Most often, the person ordering pizza remembered do dial 9 when they called Round Table an hour later to bitch them out.
Even worse was the older brother of my friend David from elementary school. David’s house was one digit off from Chuck E. Cheese, and, if somebody accidentally called their house to make a party reservation for their kids, David’s brother would take the reservation. Of course, weeks later, the party would show up and the restaurant would not be booked! Even as a small child, feared the bad karma that must have built up from that.
I like cheese. I think the bad karma comes from the cheese part of that.