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Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Telephone Conversations with Strangers

Since I have had a cellphone with the same number since 2005, I have routinely gotten quite a few incorrectly dialed calls.  For the first five years of having this number, my frequent caller was a little old lady who was calling her friend "Goldie."  I'm not sure if she ever got a hold of "Goldie," but she definitely got a hold of me for a good consistent five years.  (I always imagined that Goldie used to be blond and now wore hair curlers all day long, sat in a pink bathrobe, and smoked cigarettes as her pastime.  Just a guess.)
The tragic part of getting a lot of wrong dials is that when I say my name, most people don't realize I am saying a name. 
As a side note and since I have no pictures to go with this particular post, I got a haircut last week!
What I mean by that is that most people don't put two and two together when I say, "Hello, this is Saxon."  Maybe they think I'm saying I'm an Anglo-Saxon.  Maybe they think I'm a business.  Maybe they think I'm an 80s British rock band.  Maybe they just aren't thinking.


Today I got a great example of this type of situation where stating my name just made the situation ten times more confusing than it had to be.


My phone rang and didn't recognize the number.  I'm always weary of answering those numbers because they usually are just someone from OU wanting me to donate money (thanks but no thanks, you've already taken plenty of mine), someone that got my number from David's Bridal (who I think maliciously sold my contact information to all the most annoying wedding companies in the state who still called me long after the wedding)...or a wrong dial.  


When I answered, the first thing I heard was a man's voice saying, "Christine?"
Okay, so it's a wrong number.  But I don't want to be rude, so I responded to him.  "Hi, this is Saxon."
He responded, "What?!"


I repeated myself, knowing all too well that the man was confused because of my name.  Maybe I didn't say it clearly enough, so I responded again, "Hi, this is SAXON."

Once again, his response was, "What?!"


This wrong dial was an epic fail.  He called the wrong phone, and I've just totally confused him by simply stating my name.  Does this guy have the inability to come to his own conclusion that my voice doesn't sound like Christine's?  


Finally, I said to him, "I think you called the wrong number."
So he said, "Oh, okay" and he hung up.


I just find these situations incredibly awkward, but kind of funny.
And they seem to happen to me quite often.


Are there any types of awkward situations that continually follow you around?


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8 comments:

  1. RachelMarch 19, 2014 at 3:52 PM

    When my Dad was in the U.S., he just got a track phone with apparently a re-used number because nearly every day he'd get a call for "Ruth" from money-lenders....apparently he got the ex-number of a lady who did not pay her bills. He tried his best to tell them everytime "This is not her number anymore" but the phone calls never stopped. He was only around for 4 months...but if it had been long-term I do not think he would have wanted to keep the number! It's funny the people we can end up talking to on the phone...my grandparents' number is one number off from a local pizza place and every once in a while they'd get a call from someone who wanted to order a pizza!

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    1. Saxon @ Lets Drink Coffee, DarlingMarch 20, 2014 at 7:14 AM

      How funny about the pizza place! I did that once with a business number where I got the number wrong and called someone's house! It was so awkward! And that would get so annoying to be in your dad's situation. I'm sure the credit companies were relentless and didn't care who answered the phone, just so long as they could log that they made an attempt to contact "Ruth."

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  2. UnknownMarch 19, 2014 at 7:25 PM

    We've had our phone numbers forever too. We got them first when living in Hawaii but now that we are in Alabama the best part is the 3am wrong numbers from Hawaii. Other than that we just spent the last 2 years in Korea. THOSE wrong numbers happen all. the. time. Only I don't speak Korean. I'd always just say ENGLISH and they would keep talking like I knew exactly what was up. And when I hung up they would text me :|

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    1. Saxon @ Lets Drink Coffee, DarlingMarch 20, 2014 at 7:12 AM

      I got A LOT of misdialed calls to my American phone in the middle of the night when I lived in China (which was really annoying and I never answered them). Luckily I didn't get too many wrong numbers on my Chinese phone, but I did get a ton of texts. Sometimes they were from the cellular company, other times just random people. It is so scary speaking foreign languages on the phone!

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  3. EricaMarch 20, 2014 at 3:31 AM

    I hardly get any phone calls, since so few people actually have my number. But yesterday I got a call I'd been waiting for about a job opportunity, and I realised I have no idea how to answer my phone in German! How did I miss that?! So I awkwardly answered in English, and then switched into German - but it was so awkward as neither of us knew what language to speak in.

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    1. Saxon @ Lets Drink Coffee, DarlingMarch 20, 2014 at 7:19 AM

      Oh how funny! Answering with hello seems so normal to me, but I'm so glad when I learned Chinese they taught us how to answer the phone from the get-go since they don't use the same word that you would us to greet someone in person. Did you figure out after the phone call how to answer the phone in German? ;) Looking forward to hearing how it goes with the potential job!

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  4. SusannahMarch 20, 2014 at 4:02 PM

    Haha. That's crazy that people have such a hard time with your name. Pretty sure if someone said "This is... {whatever}" I'd assume that was their name. Also, your haircut is really cute!

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    1. Saxon @ Lets Drink Coffee, DarlingMarch 21, 2014 at 7:04 AM

      Haha, it is so funny/crazy and sometimes even rude how people react to my name. Someone told me yesterday at work that my parent's must have had a sense of humor...I wanted to say really bad that I didn't really think my name was funny or a joke...but I guess that was how they took it! People sometimes!

      Thanks, my haircut definitely has "grown" on me over the past week! I'm never sure at first if I truly like it. haha

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