No Sheep Were Harmed in the Making of this Post

I worked at a call center for three and a half years while in college in some feeble attempt to ward off student loans. They’re coming for you—student loans, that is…not call centers. Maybe. Jury is still out on that one.

People tell the most amazing, deeply personal things to complete strangers. By deeply personal, I don’t mean the latest gossip in their lives (which I wouldn’t understand anyway because, hello, we are strangers).

I heard about urology visits, lewd divorce details, foreclosure stories, coming-out-of-the-closets, college secrets and battles with any number of diseases.

Perhaps they thought I was a priest, absolving them of their sins behind the thin shield of plastic phone, never to be seen.

The stories that stood out the most over the years were ones I would tell to new recruits.

- Some Southern lady told me that her cat read the Bible each morning. She got mad when I asked if it could just read in general (and could I please send her an autographed copy of the Koran) or was just able to read the Bible.  She hung up before I could explain that the whole title of the book was “Koran Kooking: Most Holy Meals” and that I found it at flea market in Ireland.


- I once called a New Zealand entrepreneur who was walking into a meeting to fire three people. His wife had cheated on him with a sheepherder. The details of retaliation are fuzzy, but he somehow bought all the seducing-sheepherder’s land and built a mall. I asked if the mall were made out of the sheep, and if it wasn’t then it should be. He hung up.


- A gay, Buddhist monk from New Orleans told me that weed was man’s panacea (his words, not mine). I asked him if he got his rosary bead thingys from Marti Gras by flashing everyone.

- Someone once picked up the phone, screamed into it and set it down. I listened to half an hour of the Dick Van Dyke Show in the background before hanging up.

- A sweet sounding old man picked up and told me that he would go get his wife. He then put the phone down and presumably wandered off into the woods because no one ever came back. No Dick Van Dyke Show to keep me company that time.

- A lady tried to pay me with her ceramic cat collection.

- In the middle of a fascinating conversation with a professional mountain biker, the man said, “My wife informed me that she would get naked if I came to dinner. I gotta go. Bye.”
Best. Call. Ever.


- A Navy Seal officer cried and confided in me that he didn't think he would make it back from his third trip to Afghanistan. He also thought Americans didn't understand what really went on and didn't appreciate the sacrifice his men made when they exploded next to him. 
I grew up without American freedoms, I told him. I appreciate what you do, and I can't ever, ever thank you enough. I don't know if he made it back.


- When a lady started speaking in Chinese and tried to hang up as an excuse, I introduced myself in Chinese and asked her what province she was from. She, obviously unprepared for a fluent Chinese speaker to call her out, told me to "fuck off" and hung up.

- A minister once called me a "bitch" when I introduced myself.

- A lady told me she was homeless and living on the streets, which is why she wasn't interested in the product. I called her cellphone and could hear "Friends" playing in the background while she told me she "did the cocaine" every night under a bridge. Of course, I assume that she was borrowing her other homeless friend's phone or had broken into some Presbyterian family's home and planned on eating all their potted plants.

- Someone told me that they couldn't buy what I was selling because they were dead. 
"So, excuse me, but do you mean the previous owner of this number is now deceased?"
"No, I mean I'm dead. Like, right now."
"You are Mr. Smith (name changed for legal reasons...meaning I can't remember)?"
"Yeah."
"And you are dead."
"Yeah."
"You have no pulse or brain waves? Are you really a ghost and standing behind me right now?"
"Look, lady. I'm dead, okay? Stop calling this number."

- I know what explosive diarrhea sounds like through a telephone. 

Ah, humanity. 
We can't tell the truth to our loved ones, but we'll tell a telemarketer what our gynecologist discovered at our last pap smear.