Unfiltered Story #271361

I work front desk at a veterinarian’s, and I messed up because I assumed someone else messed up. We use an answering service so when the office is closed people can talk to a real person instead of an answering machine. Every morning we come in and there is an email from the answering service with who called the night before, what they were calling about and what number to call them back at.

My office also has a client with an unusual last name for our area, maybe not in parts of Europe, but I’ve never met anyone else with a name even close. It is however spelled exactly how it is pronounced and for the sake of the story lets say it starts with the syllable “ma” as in magic.

Before leaving one day the doctor has me call Mr. M regarding the lab results for his pet, I leave a message on Mr. M’s voice mail asking for him to call us back to talk about the results.

The next morning I open the answering service email and see a message from someone, reason “returning your call” and name Mr. M, except with a N instead of an M. Now Mr. M does have a bit of an accent and my first thought was the answering service misheard him or typo or something. All the rest of the letters were right.

So I called the number, a man with an accent answered.

Me: Hello, this is [me] from [clinic], returning your call about our call.

Him: Oh yes

Me: So the doctor wanted to let you know that [pet] has [easily treated issue that doesn’t really matter for the story]

Him: Wait wait, I think you have the wrong person, I called two days ago and left a message asking for an appointment, I missed the call yesterday so I call back.

Turns out Mr. N and Mr. M are from the same country.