Monday, August 4, 2008

Can you hear me now?

So, last Monday, I come home early, change into my comfies and settle into my bed for a conference call. About an hour in, I hear a knock on my door. That confident, familiar knock, you know, the “RAT-tat-tat-TAT-TAT” you would answer with a "TAT-TAT." Oh, I think, it must be one of our friends, so I get up to answer it, thinking I'll just apologetically motion to my phone, shrug, mouth the word “sorry” and send them on their way.

I put my phone on mute and open the door and there's a perky, overweight girl smiling up at me. She launches into a schpiel about how she's from the inner city and has a two-year-old daughter and is selling magazines so she can to go back to school and get a degree in social work.

Now, it normally takes all my courage and concentration to say “no” to anyone about anything, and this is even harder because I'm distracted by the conference call and taken off guard. I find myself smiling and nodding and being nice, even though in my head I'm thinking, no, stop, you'll only encourage her! So I start to explain the whole conference call thing and motion the phone, which just makes her increase the speed of her schpiel, and before I know it I've purchased two magazine subscriptions to be sent to soldiers in Iraq to read during their free time. I’m still not sure how it all happened. Argh.

Anyway, the magazines are not the point. The point is that I close the door and go back to the conference call, commenting here and there along with the other four people on the call. I start making a pretty important point when Rob suddenly interrupts me and starts wrapping up the call. I stop and try again, talking louder this time, but now Dan is talking over me, and I'm thinking, hey, why isn't anyone paying attention to me?!

That's when I look down at my phone and realize it is still on mute. Twenty minutes I've been talking and no one's been hearing me! I take my phone off mute just in time to sign off, and then sit there holding the phone and replaying the last 20 minutes of conversation, wondering how I didn't realize sooner it wasn't a conversation at all. It was like the restaurant scene in The Sixth Sense, where you think Bruce Willis and his wife are talking to each other, but then after you find out he was dead and she could never see or hear him, you realize that the scene still works without anything he said. So basically ... I was the dead person!

Um, just so I know I'm not writing this blog post to no one ... can you hear me now?

7 comments:

matt b said...

Back around the end of May I bought a quart of distilled cleaning solution from a guy who knocked on my door and told me he needed the money in order to go to community college.

Allison said...

Thanks, Matt, now I don't have to wonder if my blog is on mute.

Um, distilled what?! You're as big a pushover as I am ...

So apparently knocking on doors with a story about wanting an education is an effective way of making money. Wish I'd known that five years ago. Don't suppose people would go for the "need money to pay off my student loans" line?

Margaret said...

I think canvasing the neighborhood for the "Pay off Allie P's student loans" fund will work fine - as long as you catch people when they are on conf call...

Em said...

omigosh. I am seriously rolling on the floor of my study with tears rolling down my cheeks I am laughing so hard. Kyle discovered this first and then read it to me and it is HILARIOUS.
Well, see you soon! We'll make sure mom wears her hearing aids this week. :)

Marlise said...

I can totally hear you! :) That was a great story, Allie! Thanks for sharing! :) You are classic! I love it!

The Voice of Reason said...

Oh my gosh - that's CRAZY! What a great story!

Cyndie said...

Hilarious!

If you come up with an effective script for getting people to pay off your student loans, let me know.