Dial Zero For The Operator

For those of you that know me, I’m a fairly anal-retentive person that has little rituals, habits, and schedules that I follow on a daily basis. For example, every morning I wake up to my alarm clock SCREAMING for me to hit the snooze button. After an additional nine minutes of sleep I crawl out of bed, drag myself to the coffee pot, and hook up my morning IV. I then make a cup of coffee for Spawnette and head to the other side of the house. I awaken Spawn, who fixes his own breakfast, then creep into Spawnette’s room to leave her cup of coffee and awaken the dead….there’s more BUT you get the idea that this is a habit that I follow each and every day.

Last night I forgot to set the alarm clock. I can’t remember the last time I forgot to set the alarm clock. Sometimes I even set the alarm clock on my days off. WHO DOES THAT???

Me.

So this morning as I rolled over to see how many more nanoseconds of sleep I had left I read the clock and shot straight up realizing it was already 40 minutes past the time I should have arisen. I knew I wasn’t going to make it to work on time so I grabbed my phone so that I can call a co-worker and inform her I wasn’t going to be sitting prettily in my ergonomic office chair at 7:30 a.m. and ask that she please indicate on the dry-erase board I was going to be a few minutes late.

Now before I continue with my story, grab your cell phone, okay?

Got it?

Cool. Here’s my phone pictured below:

I love my phone, it TOTALLY kicks ass!

I proceed to dial the main number to the office and wait for the electronic message indicating I could dial my party’s extension or press “1” to dial by name. I don’t call my co-workers on the phone. When I need to speak to someone in the office I either holler out the door or I walk to their office for a little chit-chat. I don’t know “my party’s extension” so I hit “1” so that I may start dialing by name.

Here’s is where my dilemma came to fruition; answer me this, what’s your last name? Look at your phone and pretend you were prompted to dial an extension by typing your last name. I’ll use my last name as an example…..glace at the picture above and dial the name “FLANIGAN”.

People, the last name I was dialing did NOT correspond with the telephonic number keypad!!!! I couldn’t remember what letter coincided with what number! I’m frantically running around the house trying to find the landline telephone so that I can look at it while I try and dial my party’s last name. I’m typing letters and numbers until the face of my phone screen is totally and completely full. All of the sudden I hear a voice.

It’s calling out to me.

It’s faint but I hear it.

It’s asking……if it can help me.

Where the hell is this voice coming from?!?!?

I lift the phone to my ear and there she is – the “0” operator.

“OhmygoshI’msosorryIwasdialinginyourearmyphonehasakeyboardinsteadofjustnumbersandIcouldn’trememberwhichnumberwentwithwhatletterandIpanicedandjuststartedpressinglettersandnumbersandI’msosorryIwasdialingsolonginyourear.” I exclaim into the phone.

“Can I help you?”

“Yes please, will be kind enough to connect me to ‘the lady in my office that has the same birthday as me?’” I humbly ask.

“Her extension is 3812; please hold while I connect you.”




……as soon as I got to the office this morning I walk to the other side of the building so that I could apologize to the very nice young lady that had the misfortune of being the first operator in the office today.

She was very understanding – as soon as she saw how blonde and old I am.