Monday, October 23, 2006

Payphone Hacks

Larry,

I know that you are anxious to hear about the honeymoon in Costa Rica. Fear not, old friend. Several posts are forthcoming.

Before I delve into the best honeymoon ever, I thought that I'd share with you my little stroll down memory lane.

For some reason, yesterday I got to thinking about Didi Black. You don't know her. I worked with her at Bennigan's (the worst restaurant chain on the planet Earth [and beyond]) and we quickly became friends. Honestly, I had a crush on her from the moment I met her. Alas, the feelings were not mutual so I pined from afar. And, at times, from very nearby. Regardless, she came to work one day and told me about a payphone hack that someone had told her about. She said that it had to be on a payphone with red on the exterior. You had to go to one of those payphones, call 1-800-Playtex, listen to a short message, and then the phone would disconnect. However, the disconnect would leave the line open, at which point you could make a long-distance call for free. I employed this method several times and was always rewarded. Thanks, Didi!

So, yesterday I was bored and I called (from my work phone) 1-800-Platex to see if the message was still there and, much to my surprise, a man answered. I, caught off guard, asked for Playtex and was met with a very, very surly, "Try playtex.com!" Apparently, Mr. 1-800-Playtex gets calls like this all the time. I guess he should have checked before he got that 800 number.

More soon.

Paul

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I remember that trick!

(I wonder if any of your co-workers heard you ask for Playtex.)

((this thing is about to make me type "qwayaskl" to leave this comment! what, you think i've got time for random data entry?!))