Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Off to a great start

It's for...you.
Note: Identifying information has been changed in this story for reasons that will become apparent.

At the top of my task list this morning was solving an ugly little problem:

One of the organizations I work with, a volunteer group, had put out a flier with a number of contact phone numbers. But one of the numbers is wrong.

Jody, the person whose number was supposed to have been on the flier, called me late last night to point that out.

"People will call and disturb some stranger," she said. "And they won't be able to reach me to get information."

Of course, some of these fliers have already been distributed, and huge piles of them have already been printed and are ready for distribution in the next few weeks.

My task this morning was to call the designers and tell them we needed to correct Jody's contact number and reprint hundreds of fliers. Big fun.

As I contemplated the problem I decided it might help if I figured out first just whose number was on the flier. Perhaps it was the designer's girlfriend, and the whole thing had been a Freudian slip at his end — in which case I could take some high ground around the cost of reprinting the stuff.

I was curious — plus I realized it was an opportunity to warn this poor soul that they might be getting some strange phone calls later in the summer.

So I dialed.

"Hello," said Jody.

"Hi," I said, quickly recovering. "Hey, good news. I think I've solved the problem of the wrong phone number on the flier."

"Really?" she said.

At that point I lost it and began giggling hysterically.

"I...just...dialed...it," I choked out. "And you...answered!"

Jody was flabbergasted.

"I have another number?" she asked. "I need to call the phone company and..."

She caught herself quickly. "No, I think I'll wait until the end of the summer."

May all of today's problems be solved this easily and amusingly.

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