My middle and high school days were the only time in my life that I’ve lived in any one house or apartment for longer than a few months at a time. It was located in a little neighborhood on the west side of town; a place where I met the infamous Chong and where some of the best times of my life are etched into my brain. You know, all that Hallmark, little white picket fence, Leave it to Beaver type bullshit. But most importantly, the house had a phone number that was just one digit off from the local Super K-Mart.
You see, our number ended in 333. K-Mart’s ended in 666. So at the very minimum, we received two or three calls a week from unsuspecting customers who had dialed the phone without looking and simply misplaced their finger on the keypad. At first, we were polite and understanding:
“No, you’ve got the wrong number.”
“Nope, this is 333, you want 666. ”
“Yeah, this is K-Mart…haha, just kidding…”
That lasted all of 10 days. It soon became custom to sporadically hear throughout the Goob Household perfect impersonations of K-Mart employees; from the initial greeting, to the humming of the classic on-hold music while we “transferred” them to the department they sought, to the eventual part where we insulted / pissed off the caller and laughed after they hung up.
So I figured, why not recreate my two favorite K-Mart Phone Call memories; The Sold-Out Home & Garden Section and The Go Fuck Yourself Shoe Department.
The first one was actually performed by my brother Waynus. I had picked up the phone and been asked to be connected with the Home & Garden section without even so much as a simple “Hello.” This slight oversight by the caller for some reason pissed me off, so as I put her on hold, I told Waynus to pretend he worked in the H&G department and to pretend nothing was in stock. It went a little something like this.
Waynus: “Hello, this is the Home & Garden Department, my name is John, how may I help you?”
Caller: “I bought a fern bush from you just two days ago and it has already died. When will your next shipment be in, because these obviously came from a bad batch.” (notice how she didn’t say hello there either! Bitch!)
Waynus: “Hold on just one second miss, let me check our records….oh I’m so sorry, but we aren’t getting in any more ferns for the rest of the season.”
Caller: “What?! It’s April! What do you mean “the rest of the season?”
Waynus: “I honestly don’t know, I’m just reading what’s here in the logs. Tell ya what, I’ll let you come in and swap that dead fern for any plant you want once our next shipment comes in.”
Caller: “Oh, all right. Well, how about your next shipment of roses. When do they come in?”
Waynus: “Let’s see…Oh darn, we aren’t getting any more of them either.”
Caller: “Are you serious?! How can that be?”
Waynus: “You know how corporate offices can be. Nobody ever understands their reasoning…”
Caller: “Fine…(by this point she’s really getting frustrated)…How about orchids?”
Waynus: “Nope, no more of those either.”
Caller: “WHAT? How about daisies!?”
Waynus: “All out.”
Caller:”Marigolds?”
Waynus: “Nada.”
Caller: “TULIPS!?”
Waynus: “Not a one!”
(This literally went one for a full 60-90 seconds before she finally lost it. The whole time I was on the phone listening on, holding down the mute button, and trying not to burst out laughing.)
Caller: “WELL WHAT THE HELL DO YOU HAVE THEN?! I’VE JUST NAMED EVERY SINGLE DAMN FLOWER IN MY GARDEN!”
Waynus: “Okay, okay, let me go ask my manager……..Okay, he says we are getting in some ferns soon.”
Caller: “FERNS?! THAT’S WHAT THIS WHOLE CONVERSATION IS ABOUT! YOU SAID YOU WEREN’T GETTING ANY MORE IN!”
Waynus: “I did? Oh…um…hold on….yep, we’re not getting any more in!”
Caller: (Then there was this loud scream of anger followed by eight or nine curse words)
Waynus: “Wait, wait, wait, it says here we are getting some daffodils in soon!”
Caller: “WHEN?!”
Waynus: “Um….oh, no. It says we aren’t getting any more daffodils in soon.”
(More curse words followed by me finally losing it and bursting out laughing)
Honestly, I have no idea why she got so upset. She must have been having a bad day before hand or something. I didn’t feel bad though, because she could have avoided it all simply by saying “hello” to me at the start.
My most favorite call, however, needs a little background story. Chong and I were for some unknown reason wandering around Super K-Mart due to massive boredom and…well, boredom. Apparently our loitering, however, was against some asinine policy, because we were soon being followed by an assistant manager named Mark. It was apparent that he thought we were about to shoplift something, which is some pretty sound reasoning and all because every teenager in the world who walks through a store looking at things is obviously up to no good! He finally swooped down upon us with a Rent-A-Cop by his side and told us we either had to purchase something or leave. As we began to protest, he held up his hand and told the Rent-A-Cop to escort us out of the building. What Mark failed to realize was that he had just pissed off two immature teenagers who had the means and the goal to make his life as much a living hell as possible. We finally looked at each other, silently nodded, and proceeded to walk to the front of the store, and grab two shopping carts each, which made the Rent-A-Cop back off and let us be. We filled them all to the brim with as much shit as possible, before taking them to Mark and telling him we changed our minds and didn’t want any of it anymore. As he was screaming about how immature we were, we walked off smiling and feeling that justice had been served.
That was, until thirty minutes later when the phone rang in my kitchen and Chong picked it up since he was closer.
Chong: “Hello?”
Caller: “GET ME THE FUCKING SHOE DEPARTMENT!”
Chong: “One moment please!” (puts the caller on mute) “Dude, there is some chick on the phone who is pissed! Tell her you’re the shoe department and make her think you are Mark! ”
Goob: “You are truly evil….I like it!” (grabs the phone) “Yeah, this is the K-Mart shoe department. What the hell do you want?”
Caller: “I WAN…..wait, what did you just say to me?”
Goob: “I said this is the shoe department, woman, what the hell do you want? We’re a little busy right now and I don’t have time to be chit chatting on the phone with angry customers.”
Caller: “How dare you talk to me like that?! What’s your name, asshole, I’ll have your job for that!”
Goob: “HA! I don’t think so, bitch. My name is Mark and I’m an assistant manager down here. They wouldn’t fire me over your word alone! So why don’t you go try and threaten somebody else!”
Caller: “I have never in my life been treated more disrespectfully from an employee of a store than I am being treated right now! You better believe that I plan to…”
Goob: (I cut her off) “Listen bitch, I don’t care what you plan to do. You can call my boss. You can call the corporate office. You can even come down here and meet me face-to-face. The end result is still going to be the same. Nobody will give a flying fuck. Boo hoo, so you’ll take your business elsewhere. We won’t care! We have millions and millions of customers, you think we’ll cry because you’ve gone to shop at Wal-Mart? Hell, from the sound of your voice, you’re probably fat and ugly, so getting you out of our store will probably make things a little prettier around here!”
Caller: (She had really started going off when I said “fat and ugly”) “FAT AND UGLY!? FAT AND UGLY?! I’LL HAVE YOUR JOB FOR THIS! I’LL….”
Goob: (seeing that my job here was done, I felt it best to interrupt her again and get off the phone) “Blah, blah, blah. Like I said, we’re busy here, slut. So either you can get your whiny ass down here and ask to talk to me face-to-face, or you can shut the hell up and leave me alone. The choice is yours.”
I’m sure nothing ever happened to Mark over all that. I highly doubt he was in the shoe department then and even if he was, I’m pretty sure there would have been some other employee that could vouch for him saying that he never said any of those things on the phone. But I like to think that that lady actually went down to the store and caused Mark a little bit of trouble while he sorted everything out. If there’s anything I truly hate in the world, it’s profiling people just because some of their peers do certain things.
Unfortunately, my phone number no longer ends in a cool miss-dial like that. But it sure is fun to talk about those days with my brothers and sister up here in Virginia. In fact, they have reminded me of heaps of hijinks that we used to pull back in the day, which I had completely forgotten about but which their little brains soaked up richer and fuller than mine. In fact, I think I’ll create a new category called “hijinks” just for little stories like these.
