Doesn’t Have A Son-ny Disposition

(I work at a law office that does one type of law. There’s only one lawyer, though his son once did another type of law out of the same office. Due to the number of clients each side got, the son chose to move his practice to another office so there’d be less mix-up and confusion for the clients. We still get calls for the son and we usually give his phone number to them. Recently, however, we have gotten a lot of angry phone calls about his number being wrong in the phone book.)

Me: “Good morning, [Father’s Law Office].

Caller: “I need to talk to [Son].”

Me: “I’m afraid you have the wrong number, ma’am. This is [Father’s Law Office]. [Son] moved his office over a year ago.”

Caller: “This is the number in the phone book. Are you sure [Son] isn’t there?”

Me: “Yes, ma’am. I can promise you that [Son] is definitely not here.”

Caller: “Can you give me his phone number?”

Me: “Sure, let me Google it.” *finds our Internet is down* “Oops, no, I apologize. I’m currently not able to bring his phone number up.”

Caller: “You don’t have it?”

Me: “No, unfortunately not. We used to have it written down on cards, but they disappeared. We fear our cleaning staff may have thrown them away. It’s always been easier just to look it up on the Internet than to write it down again.”

Caller: “Well, I’ll see if I can find it.”

(Five minutes later…)

Me: “Good morning, [Father’s Law Office].”

Caller: “I looked in the phone book and this is the only number I can find for [Son].”

Me: *thinking* “Why would you call back the phone number you know isn’t the correct one?”

Me: “It’s strange they would put the incorrect phone number for him in the phone book, but I can promise you it’s not the correct one.”

Caller: “And you can’t give me his number?”

Me: “I’m not able to use the Internet until I get a connection. All I know is the area code is [number] and the first part of the phone number is [number]. I can’t help more than that.”

Caller: “It’s a start, at least.”

(Three minutes later…)

Caller: “Are you able to Google it now?”

Me: “Ma’am! I do have other calls coming in. You can look the phone number up yourself, you know.”

Caller: *sniff* “It’s not my place to do your job. You should have that number handy.”