3 People Think I'm A Woman On The Phone

Photo by Katrin Hauf on Unsplash

Have you ever had a weird occurrence that took place? Apparently, I sound like a woman on the phone. At least that’s what 3 people thought. I’m going to give you a sample at the bottom of this post. Then, you’ll be able to tell me whether I sound like a woman or not. I don’t think I do. But you can be the judge.

First Instance

About 15 years ago, I kept getting a free newspaper in the driveway. It was from the Hometown News. They published weekly and besides the newspaper stories, they had coupons in the middle of the paper.

I didn’t ask for it. It was a freebie. They put a subscriber sheet inside the newspaper wanting you to give them your address and contact info to continue receiving the newspaper. I didn’t and I kept getting it. At least two months later, I was still receiving it without giving my information. The coupons were all from stuff I didn’t buy. I didn’t want it to go to waste. I thought about jumping on social media and seeing if anyone needed or wanted them but I wasn’t on social media so I’d have to sign-up.

I decided to donate them to some military families. They were serving us, so they deserved the freebies.

First, I needed to figure out where I was going to send them. I decided to send them to 2 different states, one for New York since I’m originally from there and one for Florida, my current location.

I chose Fort Drum, a U.S. Army installation, as my donation site for New York. I was able to find an email address and send a message to that person. They replied back with a mailing address for me to send the coupons.

For the Florida location, I picked Patrick Air Force Base (now renamed Patrick Space Force Base), which was only a couple miles from my house and across the river. I emailed someone from their website. She replied back but not with a mailing address. She wanted me to call the base and talk to someone in the area of family services.

This is where it got weird. I dialed the phone and a woman answered. I told her that I wanted to donate a bunch of coupons (it was like 250). She initially wanted me to drive them to the base. But I told her I was just a civilian and how was I going to get in. So she had to ask another woman the address where I could send them. She told me to hang on and then I heard her tell the other woman this:

woman on phone: “Hey Margaret, there’s a lady on the phone who wants to donate a bunch of coupons to us. What is the address I should tell her?”

LOL. I didn’t want to embarrass her and tell her that she was actually talking to a guy.

Second Instance

Telemarketers were always calling and still do call to sell you something. I just don’t answer now since I have CallerID. Even when they instituted the do-not-call list, you got flooded with calls. I thought that was supposed to put a stop to all those calls. I just got more.

One day, a guy called trying to sell me something. All throughout the conversation, he called me “Mam”. Then he asked to talk to the gentleman of the house when he couldn’t get through to me. Click! I hung up on him.

Third Instance

This one got out of control fast. It was kind of funny after I finished this phone call because I thought of something else. We’ll get to that at the end.

I had moved to a townhome right down the road from where we had just sold the house. At the time, I had Earthlink for my Internet. I used an Earthlink email address. Upon moving to the new place, I found out they had Dish Network for both television and Internet. So I was no longer needing Earthlink. Trying to cancel the service was a nightmare. I thought you could cancel through the Internet chat on their website. I chatted with someone and they told me I would have to call them. You had to talk to a customer service representative.

The conversation went back and forth with the guy. He tried so hard to convince me that I needed the email address I had with them. He told me, “Mam, what about all your correspondence? You won’t be able to get your emails.” I was yelling on the phone to him. He just wouldn’t get it. Finally, I did something that probably surprised him. I dropped an F-bomb. All of the sudden, he starts apologizing and saying that he’s going to cancel the account. That was the first and only time I have ever swore at someone on the phone.

Now the funny thing is, I thought the account was set up in my name. But after he called me “Mam” and I got off the phone, I remembered that it was in my Mom’s name. So when he called me “Mam”, he thought I was my Mom. So when I got off the phone with him, I told my Mom, “You just said a bunch of bad words to some customer service guy.” LOL.

Your Turn

Here is my voice. I wanted to read this whole post but I started laughing when I got to the funny parts, so I didn’t want to do a bunch of editing. So here it is. A small sampling.

Have you ever been called the opposite sex before? I know that at least one of my subscribers has. Anyone else?

Until next time, happy reading.

-Matt