Phone fun

[SurlyBarman]

Years ago I was working at a coffee/sandwich shop. Occasionally, we'd get some weirdos calling up on the phone. Never did find out if they were pranks or if the people on the other line really were that crazy.
This one guy called up, looking for someone named Mitch or Mike or something. Wrong number, I tell him. This is a cafe.
Guy: Stop messing with me, man. I know your voice!
Me: Dude, I just told you, you've got the wrong number. Who's Mitch?
Guy: Quit messing around! I know it's you!
Guy proceeds to yell at me and stops just short of giving me death threats. I find this quite amusing, so I keep the guy on the line for a while before I finally hang up on him.
Had another person call up wanting me to read the entire menu to him. Quite an absurd request seeing as we had 42 different sandwiches.
Another customer from out of town forgot their hat in the restaurant and called while they were driving back to wherever it is that they came from. Asked me if I could please mail it back to them. I found the hat. Nothing special about it. Just a regular, beat up old baseball cap. For some reason, I honored the request and mailed the thing to them, paying the postage out of my own pocket. No big deal there. At least they were nice enough to mail me a thank you card.
At another coffee shop where I was working, we sometimes got people calling in to ask directions on the subway. Now this would have been reasonable if they were asking directions to get to the coffee shop, but they were looking for directions to somewhere else that was nowhere near the place. Dude, this ain't 411. That's like walking into a hardware store and asking for Polish sausages.

[Imogene]

*giggles at the Polish sausage reference*
We used to have two people who would call our Chesterfield store at absolutely the worst times of the day, and ask us the most inane questions ever. One we affectionately dubbed 'Anime the Kid', and, as I was the anime geek of the store, his calls were always handed off to me. I will give you a sampling of the questions I remember from him:
"When will they start playing episodes of Naruto on Cartoon Network?"
"How much will it cost to get extra channels on my satellite?"
"When will there be new Mecha anime out?"
"Well, is it (Evangelion, I think) anything like Pokemon?"
"Do you have any anime that's a cross between Gundam and Pokemon?"
"When's Gundam SD coming out on DVD? (a legit question, I admit, but after asking it twenty times in the same conversation, it's not going to be answered with any modicum of respect)"

The other pain never got a nickname... She called me once a long time before she started calling every week, asking if we had Dead and Breakfast in the store. We did, so I found it, and she suddenly asked me to read the back to her... "Um... sure..." So, over the phone, I read the seven or eight paragraphs of text. She seemed placated, so I hung up. A few months later, she called and asked me what other movies we had with Jeremy Sisto in them... So, I check the system. I start reading the list.
H: "Now, I've seen About a Boy, and I know he wasn't in that..."
M: *go over to find the DVD and check the cast list, yup, no mention of him* "Yeah, he's not showing up in the cast list either..."
H: "So, why did he come up in your search?"
M: "Lady, I didn't write the program, I have no idea exactly how the listings are set up. It did however filter About a Boy into my results."
H: "Do you have a copy of 'Shoot the dog' (Or something like that...)?"
M: *whiplash from the topic change, check the comp* "I'm showing us as having one in the store, hold on, let me go check..." *I find one, and tell her such*
H: "Can you read the back to me and see if Jeremy Sisto's in it?"
M: *I skim the paragraphs on the back, and read the one with his name in it*
H: "Is that all there is?"
M: *groan inwardly* "No..." *read it all for her, by this point, I have a line four deep at the register* "I'm sorry, ma'am, I have customers I have to check out... if you can come into the store, we can help you more extensively..."
H: *sudden silence*
M: *turn off phone, apologise to line of customers*

I heard from a manager that she called back later in the week, asking for more Jeremy Sisto works... we eventually decided she was either lonely or senile... or it was a prank...

[MadMike]

My wife used to work at a drug store ages ago, and one day someone called in and asked if they sold "extra-large condoms." Specifically, he asked if they had anything for "12 inches."

She's pretty sure it was one of her friends pranking the place, but it wasn't me, and no one else ever admitted to it.