Story Time: Three Strange Calls I’ve Gotten Over the Years At the Stations

Sedalia's an interesting place. What we may lack in size or population, we make up for in CREATIVITY.

I've pretty much worked here since I was in college. Yeah, there was a little time I was gone, but you could safely say technically I was here for ten years, and then the second round has been about eight years or so I've been here. When I talk to non radio people about the job, they always have a few of the same questions. Sometimes it's simple stuff about technology, and sometimes it's about the listeners themselves.

And you know, I have gotten some strange calls over the years. I used to work evenings (at the time I was working full time at one job from 8-3, and then I'd work here from 4-12) and... well, I guess the night makes the "interesting" stuff come out. I can't tell you how many times someone has called to ask me to pick lottery numbers. Sometimes people call because they're mad about something in the Police Reports, but most of the time that's easy to settle. Some people, though... there's no settling things. Let me tell ya a couple stories.

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Anyway, one time I had one lady call to yell at me for some other radio station not picking up their phone*. She called, I told her she called the wrong station. She thanked me, hung up, and then proceeded to call me back like, seven times. Still complaining because....the other place wasn't picking up. I asked her if she'd call McDonald's to complain about Burger King, and then she told me a story about how she'd jumped in a lake once when she was a teenager. At that point, I think I stopped picking up.

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Another time I got a call where a dude was basically...yelling at me for not using our app to its potential, I guess? Although I could never get him to explain WHAT our potential was supposed to be or do. He kept telling me we needed to send out codes so that "people would know". I asked him what codes he wanted, he got mad. I asked him what he wanted me to tell him to do, and he just got madder. I asked him to please calm down and stop yelling, and he got the maddest. Turns out he wasn't even talking about what we had on our app, he was talking about Parler. Which isn't a thing now, but I think he might have been buying into the "media conspiracy" thing.

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The best stories came from a guy named Howard. I actually don't know who he is or was, I never met him. Howard used to call me all the time and leave messages so long he'd have to get cut off by the machine, call back, and then get cut off by the machine again. He'd tell me all about how he was so sorry to run over those witches, or about the zombie farm out in the county... he was different.

Nowadays, admittedly, we don't get as many calls as we used to. Most of the time people call because they want to talk to someone who works here, which is fine, but we don't get as many "interesting" calls these days. Unless you count endless spam calls, which, I'm pretty sure you get, too.

Have you ever gotten a wrong number call that...just didn't believe you? Or have you ever gotten a call you couldn't understand? Tell me all about it!

Telephoningly yours,
Behka

*This actually happens a LOT more often than you'd think. I get calls all the time from people who are angry about something...someone else said on a different station? Like, I don't even know what they said. I wasn't listening, I was doing my own show? Usually you have to try to interrupt them to tell them they have the wrong number. By then, they normally stop yelling because they realize they're yelling at the wrong person.