"I see stupid people"

Sadly my part time job is a mecca for prank calls. I’m never sure which I dread more, the men who decide to call us as a free replacement for the 900 numbers or the kids. Either way, we’re not allowed to hang up on the caller and, in the case of the kids, we have to treat the caller as if we’re speaking to an adult. When it comes to the kids, we can usually get them off the phone pretty quickly.

Our ordering system has a form of caller id and the phone number being called from always shows up. When we get a prank call usually reading the number will get the caller to hang up. With the kids it’s kinda funny even. “I show your number as 555-1212” and there’s an “oh crude” type of silence. But that doesn’t always work, so then we resort to asking for a credit card number and that will either get them to hang up right away, or at least pretty quickly.

There’s been several times when I would love to bust the prank calls, but I bite my tongue, and never more so than tonight. I had a boy call and ask for the item being shown, a shirt. I asked him what size he wanted and had to repeat several times the size range it was available in. Reading the phone number didn’t work, he gave me his “number” and asking for the credit card number didn’t work either. Kid just kept asking why it was needed and stating I must want the number pretty badly.

We went around regarding the credit card number a few times and then Kid asks if we ship to Canada. I told him we are not able to ship items to Canada. His next question was “Do you ship to Toronto?” I then informed him Toronto is in Canada so he asked if we ship to the United Kingdom. Upon hearing that we only ship within the United States, Kid says “that doesn’t make sense since the United Kingdom and United States are the same.” Now, I was thinking before this kid needs to pay more attention in school, but when he seemed surprised that Puerto Rico is part of the United States, that confirmed it.