New numbers….

It's funny, when you get new phone numbers for everything, the chances that those numbers used to belong to people who owe other people a lot of money must be pretty high. 

I say that because for the first two months, the only people that ever called our home phone were looking for a John or Jane Doe. (All names in this blog post have been changed…mostly because these people must have enough problems already, they don't need me adding to their angst.) One call was actually from their neighbor, who was traveling, and was calling to ask if I would please move his car for him during the upcoming snow emergency. After a few minutes of confusion (it was a snow emergency, and a lot of our neighbors were traveling) I figured out before he did that he had the wrong number. In the process of convincing him that I was not answering the phone on behalf of Mr. or Mrs. Doe, he gave me their address (an apartment building not far away from us).   

It got to be so bad that I turned the ringer off of our home phone for the first month. When the kids started giving their home number out at school, I finally figured out how to set up our voicemail system. There were 25 messages for Mr. or Mrs. Doe. It was quite an eye opener to listen to them consecutively. Some were from telemarketers. Others were polite, requests to call the banker and/or debt consultant back to help get back on track. One guy had a system, he called once a week at the same time every week (in my opinion, not a very good system if you are trying to find someone). And finally, toward the end of the month, the messages started out with, "if you are not Mr. or Mrs. Doe, please do not listen further…" Which, would probably usually be met with the response, "Yeah, right." But I chose to abide and not listen further. Mostly because I just didn't need to know any more about these poor people anymore than I already did. 

I felt  a little bad that I hadn't been more diligent in answering the phone. The calls I've gotten on my cell phone for a Mr. Smith (also a pseudonym) were somewhat more annoying but subsided more quickly, probably because I had to answer the calls. One was an an automated call, where I was directed to sit on hold so I could talk to a "debt planning consultant" - which I did so that I could tell them that it was a new number. Ugh. Although, the call I answered a few minutes ago was really sneaky. Someone pretending to sound like they were a friend…but the tone changed immediately when I explained that I must have Mr. Smith's old number because I've been getting all kinds of calls for him.

So I've learned a few lessons: 1.) I never want to be that person who has to make those calls; 2.) I never want to be that person they are calling; and 3.) If I am ever that person they are calling, I'm going to get a new phone number immediately. Although, on second thought, making someone else have to deal with those calls must run up quite a big bill in the karma department. I think I will just make sure I'm debt-free...in all respects.