Hello? Who is It?

My house phone rang at 10 AM.

"Hello?"

"Is this Salon Cutz?" the female voice said.

"Um no, sorry, you have the wrong number."

"What number did I dial?"

"How the hell should I know, I wasn't watching you."

"Huh?"

Click.

When I moved into the house I'm currently living in, I was assigned a phone number that had previously belonged to Salon Cutz hair stylists. I didn't know this at the time, but a never-ending parade of wrong numbers clued me in almost immediately.  The phone company never changed the number in their directory.

I tried to rectify the situation by calling the phone company myself, letting them know that their listing for Salon Cutz was incorrect. 

For some reason, the douchebag from Verizon didn't believe me.

"I'm checking here, sir, and the number we have for Salon Cutz is 867-5309."

"Yes, I know that," I replied, "but see, that's my number. That's why I called, the listing is wrong."

"That's the listing we have and no one has contacted us to change it."

"I'M contacting you. You need to change the listing, I'm getting wrong numbers all the time."

"I can only change the number if the business owner requests it."

Now I was getting angry. "I'm not asking you to change their phone number, I'm just asking you to fix the listing, changing it to the correct number!"

"Well, as far as I'm concerned, the number we have is correct."

"But it's NOT! That's MY number!"

"Can you verify that?"

Verify it? Like I don't know my own phone number. But I had another idea.

"How about if we hang up, you call 867-5309 and see who answers?"

"Oh, good idea. Okay. I'll call right back."

I hung up the phone and waited.

RING!

"Hello, this is Salon Cutz, can I help you?"

"That's what I thought, is this the owner?"

"Nah, I'm just fuckin' with you, I'm the guy from before."

"Oh. I guess this IS your number, then. We'll go ahead and fix the listing. Sorry for taking your time."

"Thanks, I appreciate it. Bye."

Moron.

To the complete and utter surprise of no one, the problem was not taken care of and to this day, seven years later, the phone book still lists my number as the number for Salon Cutz. I get, on average, five or six calls a week from those in follicular need. For a while there, it was driving me batty.

But then . . .One day, I decided, screw it. If the phone company isn't going to work with me on this, I'm just gonna have some fun.

So I started taking appointments.

RING RING!

"Hello?"

"Is this Salon Cutz?"

"Yes it is, this is Francois speaking, how can I help you?"

"Do you have any appointments open for this Saturday?"

"Let me check." I put down the phone, went to the fridge, and got myself a Diet Coke. "Yes, we do. We have a two o'clock and a three-thirty."

"Two would be fine."

"Your name?"

"Stephanie."

"All right, Stephanie, we have you down for two o'clock on Saturday the 12th, and you'll be taken care of by Chantelle. See you then."

"Thanks, bye."

Okay, before you imagine poor Stephanie driving aimlessly around our fine city and think to yourself, "Man, Chris is a complete JERK," I need to tell you that Salon Cutz still exists, in the same location it's always been. They just changed their phone number. So Stephanie did indeed have an appointment.

It's just that the Salon Cutz people didn't know it.

I don't know how my little jest played out, but I'd guess it went something like this:

"Hello, can I help you ma'am?"

"Yes, I'm Stephanie, I'm here for my appointment with Chantelle."

"Um, we don't have a Chantelle here. Are you sure you're in the right place?"

"This is Salon Cutz, right? I made my appointment on Monday. I spoke with Francois."

"Francois?"

So yeah, I've taken the odd appointment from time to time. I've also been known to quote prices on conditioner, dye kits, styling gel, all sorts of things. And let me tell you, Salon Cutz has VERY reasonable prices.

Okay, maybe I AM a complete jerk.


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