4:45am is too early on a Saturday

[Aut]

We have 2 phones connected to the business line here. The corded one is in the office and the cordless has its base in the house. The cordless is rather old and needs to be charged every night. Last night, the man didn't put it on the base when he came to bed. I thought about getting up to do it, but was too lazy. Good thing because the phone started ringing at 4:45 this morning. The base is next to the kids room, so it would have woken them up.

We ignore the first call. When it rang again, I told the man he probably should answer it. A little bit of panic starts to creep in because if they are that insistent on calling, it might be family with bad news. My grampa had a biopsy on his prostate yesterday, so he was the first I thought of. So the man gets up to grab the phone, but it started having issues, so he went into the office, but not fast enough and missed the call. He decided to get up and go for his walk. While he's in the restroom, the phone starts ringing again. I jump up and grab the cordless, see that it wasn't going to work, so I ran into the office. I missed it. I stood there, trying to get the back off the cordless because I need to disconnect the battery to reset it so it will charge after these issues. The phone rings again. I pick it up and it's a freakin' fax machine. I hang up and fiddle with the office phone and apparantly turned the answering machine on. A few minutes later, I'm on the other side of the house, hear the phone ring again and the answering machine pick up and a voice. I go back to the office and check the message that is a recording saying "our business has designated this as a fax line. If it is not, please press one." Seriously? There is more than one thing wrong with that. And the phone rings again. I took it off the hook. 6 calls in 15 minutes before 5am on a Saturday. That is just very very wrong.

Meanwhile, I think they killed the cordless. It will not charge. That means I will have to dig the old corded out of the office closet to hook up in the house (always handy during power outages). But I won't be able to keep it out of reach of the 4 year old and I just got that whole nonsense about not letting kids answer the phone this week. I imagine that there's going to be a lot of missed calls because it is hard to hear the phones in certain rooms, and/or a new crop of bruises as I run into furniture and cabinets in tight places while running to answer it.

This is going to be a long day.

[Magpie]

I confess to making a 5:30 call to a contractor once. I didn't realise that it was a cell/home phone number. (And since I knew he wouldn't be happy at being told "I can't do that for you" I was taking advantage of the 3 hour time difference to leave a message).

[Andara Bledin]

Standard fax machines are set to try to send a fax 6 times by default. This is mostly to get around problems like busy signals. My work changes that to 4, which is still pretty annoying.

^-.-^

[EricKei]

Maybe the laws are different there -- but, unless you have engaged in actual business with those people, making an "actual phone call", robotic and intended for the fax machine or not, calling you at that hour is illegal...

[Exaspera]

That's just plain BAD! A phone call at that time in the morning, especially on a Saturday, usually means a family emergency, at least in my experience. I am glad that it wasn't for your sake.

[KabeRinnaul]

Kheldarson and I stayed at a condo her aunt's friends owned last week, and a couple times a day, for the entire week, we'd hear the phone ring and the answering machine pick up. It was always an automated call that told us "For English, please press 1 now." Then did Spanish, then waited a moment, then cut off.

The messages that were already on there were pretty interesting, too... apparently one of their previous guests had been sent to a collections company after leaving that as his number, judging by the very angry-sounding man saying "I've been authorized to use different methods to handle your case, considering your situation."