I answer sort of the “official” phone of the company after the CEO. I don’t know if that matters. I only know I have been getting a lot of scam calls lately, but being “official”, I can’t refuse to answer unknown numbers. And I am fed up with them.

Scammer: “Hi. I am calling you from Microsoft Support. There is VIRUS on your computer.”

Me: “Hi, thank you for calling.”

Scammer: “You have virus on your computer, and I will tell you how to remove them. First, you need to—”

Me: “You do know that you have called an adult phone line? We charge $5.99 per minute. I am totally fine with talking to you, but I just need to make sure you understand the cost of this.”

Scammer: “What? I will not pay $5.99 per minute.”

Me: “You are still on the phone with me, and the meter is running.”

Scammer: *Panicky* “You cannot charge me $5.99 per minute!”

Me: “I am not charging you. Your phone company is adding it to the bill. You accepted this when you didn’t hang up after the initial message before you were connected to me. All our prices were explained there.”

Scammer: “I will not pay.” *Hangs up*

Five minutes later, the phone rings again.

Me: “Hello, [My Name] speaking.”

Scammer: “There was no message before I was connected to you. If you are charging $5.99 per minute now, you are scamming me!”

Me: “After I told you I was charging $5.99 and that this was a phone service for adults, you still called me back, and now you’re telling me that despite the fact that you now know we charge $5.99 per minute, you want to talk to me about not paying $5.99 per minute… for $5.99 per minute? So far, you have spent $33 on this. As I told you before, I can keep talking to you about the bill, or we can switch to something more like what my other customers want to talk about. What are you wearing now?”

Scammer: *Click*

I am male, and I work in the finance department of a software company.

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I work at the front desk at a clinic. I answer the phone, and it is an obvious (to me) scam, saying that the caller is from Apple and that our cloud data has been lost or stolen. I hang up, but after I do so, I think of a way to mess with the scammers and hope they call back. They do.

Scammer: “Hi. This is Apple calling to let you know that your cloud data has been lost. We need your login information immediately to retrieve it, or it will be gone forever!”

Me: “Oh, no!”

Scammer: “Yes, it is very important that you give us your login information so we can retrieve your data.”

Me: “My data is in clouds?”

Scammer: “Yes, your cloud data.”

Me: “How’d they get my data all the way up there? Do they put it in the chemtrails?”

Scammer: “…Ma’am?”

Me: “The chemtrails! In the sky! Is that how they put my data in the clouds? My manifesto about how the earth is flat and we’re being deceived by Reptilians at the top of the chains of power is up there! Did the government steal it?”

The scammer introduced me to curses I’d never heard before and hung up.

One night, my friends and I are prank-calling a famous televangelist’s donation line.

Friend: “Can I speak to [Televangelist’s First Name]?”

Operator: “Who?”

Friend: “[Televangelist’s Full Name].”

Operator: *Shocked* “Oh, no! No one is allowed to speak to him. I’m not even allowed to speak to him. Talking to [Televangelist] would be like talking to… talking to…”

Friend: “Talking to God?”

Operator: “No, like Dan Rather or someone.”

This happened in the late 1970s or early 1980s, as told by my father. It happened in a small country east of the Iron Curtain, where meritocracy was sort of turned around. Your career wasn’t determined by what you knew or even who you knew. The one point that would determine your status in life was your (and your parents’) devotion to the Party. If your parents weren’t big enough fans, you would never attend a university or get a decent job, and vice versa.

Enter Alfons. (Obvious fake name is obvious.) Alfons’s parents were devoted communists, so he was pushed through a university, passed with flying colours without doing any work and, having his fresh Master’s degree, was placed in a cozy middle-management office job in one of the country’s largest wood processing plants. This place did everything — trees went in, furniture went out. It covered something like eighty hectares of land.

One fine day, the huge wooden board that served as the tabletop of a massive table saw snapped in half. Line outage was a big problem even in the communist paradise of planned economy, so even Alfons left his office and made his way to the shop floor in order to help the workers stand around and shake their heads. After a while, he asked no one in particular:

Alfons: “What are we going to do?”

Everybody knew Alfons was barely more intelligent than any random piece of lumber found in that plant, and the foreman didn’t give a f***, so he said:

Foreman: “We’ll weld it.”

Alfons: “Weld it? We can do that?”

Foreman: “Yes, we need a special electrode for the arc welder. They should have one at [Department].”

Alfons was now ready to save the day, and off he went to [Department]. Halfway across the campus. On foot. [Foreman] obviously picked up the phone and called [Department] to warn them. When Alfons got there, they said, “Sorry, we’re out, but there should be one over there.”

Rinse and repeat, with Alfons running across the campus from place to place only to hear that they couldn’t help him. At last, he got to a place that couldn’t be reached by phone for some reason, and the lady there explained to him the full extent of his stupidity.

Thus ended the quest for the Wooden Electrode. The nickname stuck.

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I’m cashiering on a register that holds all the smokes and alcohol. It’s 10:00 pm, and two men in their early twenties come up to the counter. They have three random novelty items; it’s strange and unusual to get odd items this late at night, but maybe it is for some fraternity, I don’t know. It’s a college town, so I get weird stuff from frats a lot.

I scan the items.

Me: “Your total is $22.14.”

Grinning at each other, they reach into their jackets and slam down two-gallon Ziploc bags, full of only pennies. I stare them in the eye, but they don’t even look back at me. Everyone else in line groans and goes to other registers. These two kids know what they’re doing, but they don’t know what they’re in for because I am prepared for this; I knew this was going to inevitably happen.

I grin with them because I am gonna get paid during this no matter what happens.

Me: “Is this $22.14?”

Ringleader: “…”

Me: “Did you count it?”

Ringleader: “Nope.”

Me: “Are you going to?”

Ringleader: “Nope.”

Me: “Is it at least $22.14?”

Ringleader: “Don’t know.”

Me: “Nice.”

My coworker tries to “save” me.

Coworker: “Hey! You guys can use the self-checkout. It can take all of your coins at once.”

Me: “Oh, don’t worry about it, [Cowor]—”

Ringleader: “Nope, I don’t trust them, lady.”

His partner laughs.

Coworker: “What? Why?!”

Ringleader: “Doesn’t count all your change right.”

Coworker: “I’ve used them before. It really works!”

Me: *To [Coworker]* “I got this.”

I unpack the Ziplocs and throw all the pennies on the counter. It’s a beautiful, massive s***storm of a mess. I start digging into it; I am Frank in a dumpster in “It’s Always Sunny”. The two, still avoiding my gaze, start chuckling as if they are taking away my dignity. They whisper to each other, “Dude, oh, my God,” “Dude, yeah,” “Dude, hilarious,” etc.

I count each penny, one by one. My coworker comes up to me.

Coworker: “Guess I’ll help you count this.”

Me: “Don’t worry about it.”

She looks at me, confused. Then, she puts on her “get down to business” look.

Coworker: “I got your back.”

Me: “Oh… Okay.”

We work up a system where we count the pennies into stacks of ten, and then put them into piles of ten to make a dollar. We make progress slowly but surely. Some customers come to the line, but we advise them to try another line. Some of them look confused, but when they see the counter full of pennies, they understand. Another register in the liquor department opens, so it isn’t too bad for other customers.

We get to about $12, about ten minutes in, and then I “accidentally” knock over the piles.

Me: “Oops. Sorry.”

My coworker looks at my grin. I give her a wink and tilt my head, motioning her to leave.

Coworker: “You know what? I think I’d better let you do this.”

Me: “Ha, all right.”

My coworker leaves. I look at the two guys. They are absolutely stunned at the fallen piles of pennies.

Me: *To the ringleader* “Yeah, I’m going to have to count all of this again.”

Ringleader: “…Okay.”

I start from zero. I count slower than ever and make my way back up. The duo is entirely silent. I get to about $7.

Me: “Drats. I lost count. I’d better start all over again.”

Ringleader: “Really?”

Me: “Oh, yeah. Man…”

Ringleader: “Why?!”

Me: “I lost count, sir. I could be in trouble if my register doesn’t have the right amount of cash, and I don’t want to rip you off.”

Ringleader: “…”

It’s about half an hour later. My manager walks past and looks at me. I smile at him, he looks at the counter, and he walks away without a word.

I eventually count all the change, and surprisingly, they have only $18!

Me: “Hmm, I think that this is $18.”

The duo has been dead silent. They look done for the night.

Me: “I’ll recount it.”

I f****** recount it.

Me: “I think this is actually $19.25.”

Without a word, the ringleader whips out a $5.

Me: “Seriously? You had cash?”

Ringleader: “Needed to get rid of my change.”

Me: “No problem. I’ll just recount this again. I want to make perfectly sure that this is $19.25 since I counted $18 the first time.”

Ringleader: “Are you kidding me?”

I shook my head no, completely serious.

The ringleader took a twenty-dollar bill straight out of his pocket and threw it at me. Internally, I died because they were smart enough to have a backup plan, and the fact that he was touching his cash in his pocket the entire time kinda messed with me.

I took the cash, did the transaction, gave him his change, thanked him, and wished them a good night. The two started to put their pennies back in the Ziploc bags, and I didn’t help them at all. I watched them just as they had watched me.

Lots of pennies dropped to the floor, but they didn’t care to pick them up. It looked like their souls had been sucked out of them.

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