[Authors note: I do more shopping around Christmas than any other time of year so the reader should not be surprised that I also run into more dick-heads. I didn't have a phone number in those days, and when I responded to their ad for a microwave, the ad didn't say part of the sales price was giving them a phone number.]
I had the BrandsMartUSA buying experience today. They weren’t going to sell me a microwave unless I told them my phone number. They said, “This is a privately owned store and we don’t have to sell anybody anything”. I said, "Yes but I drove over here in my privately owned car, with my privately owned gasoline, using my privately owned time, so if you were wise, you'll sell me the microwave and leave it at that."
I found out that BrandsMartUSA is convinced everyone in the US has a phone number. If you try to complain you'll find they want even more private information before they'll listen. These slippery bastards have figured out a certain ratio of people won't complain when you know where they live. The reason I mention all this is because the situation had a humorous outcome. Last day I told you I'd been advising people for years to use misinformation and part of that misinformation was a fake telephone number.
Although I cannot tell you the details of how I acquired the information, I got a pleasant but shocking surprise at how far my advice has sunk into the American system. The phone number I give out I had discovered working late one New Year's Eve on the repair desk, and this phone number has very little use other than to fill in the blanks.
The phone is only manned one day a year, the rest of the time it just rings and rings. I won't tell you the phone number but I will tell you that the South Pole has an area code. Imagine my surprise when the salesjerk typed this number into his database and the screen lit up with dozens of pages of people named John Smith who had all done the same thing. They could only have gotten that number from reading my works!
He kind of stood there staring at the screen not knowing what it meant, so I stated that obviously I was not the only person who thought my phone number was none of BrandsMartUSA’s business. All he could say was, “I never said you were. I never said you were.” Not a typo, he said it twice and took a breath between the sentences. This guy was at least fifty.
[Authors note: that phone number has since been changed, but there is a generous supply of unused telephone numbers throughout Antarctica.]
