We’d Be Interested In You Voicing Your Opinion On This

I have a relatively deep voice for a woman, and I’m often mistaken for a man over the phone. I’ve always found it amusing, especially when my grandparents would think that I was my brother if I answered the phone.

My husband and I had recently bought our first house and went about getting utilities set up: electricity, water, that sort of thing. We shared the responsibility, and it just so happened that he forgot to have my name added to the waste management (trash and recycling pickup) account. All the other ones were in both our names, but not that one. And then he had such an incredibly busy few weeks at work that he had no time to call in during business hours to add me.

Normally, this would be fine because we could still pay the bill, but we were fixing up the house and needed a temporary dumpster to hold the old stained carpet, chipped linoleum, and other “treasures” the previous owners left behind, and that required calling in. Because I wasn’t on the account, I couldn’t authorize the addition of a new service. With all the stress of my husband’s job, he wasn’t going to be able to call them for a while, and we wanted the garbage gone.

So, I called, explaining in my deeper-than-the-average-woman’s voice that I was my husband. Since I knew all the passwords, security questions, and his personal information, I was able to fly through the screening with no problem. (My husband knew that I’d planned to do this, for what it’s worth.) I got the temporary dumpster ordered — and then had “my wife” added to the account, as well.