When you call someone

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When you call someone Thursday July 20

For my job, I often touch base with people who we have previously worked with in the past. Unfortunately, sometimes "the past" means over a year and a half ago, and people change their mobile numbers, e-mail addresses, and so on without telling us. It's not like they are trying to shirk us; it's simply that who remembers to notify every person they've ever given their phone number to to let them know it has changed? Right.

When I call someone's home, of course, I'm not just bound to speak to the person I'm trying to reach, I might also talk to their wife, their husband, parent, child, what have you. In a lot of cases, a spouse may simply tell me, "oh, he/she is not home from work yet," in which case, I indicate that I'd like to reach them on their mobile, and demonstrate that I know the old number in an effort to build rapport so they provide me with the new one.

Today, however, when I made such calls, I got quite different responses than what I was expecting.

"May I speak with so-and-so-san?"

"He hasn't come home."

"Oh, I see. Well, I have his mobile number, but it says it's out of service. Do you happen to know his new number? His old one that I have is 070..."

"I don't have the new one either. Like I said, he hasn't come home," she said, sounding crushed at remembering the reality.

"Oh........Ah, thank you, excuse me."

*click*

And this happened twice, in sequence, with a slightly different dialogue. Apparently Thursday is deadbeat Dad day in Japan.

My coworker, who is Japanese, reacted to me reacting to this. "It's normal, you know, guys around 34-40 or so just not coming home. I did that too, actually...(three second pause) of course, that's also the reason I'm divorced."

Right. Moral of the story? When you call someone, never forget that you can't see what they are in the middle of. This is actually why I don't like the phone outside of work, despite its beautiful immediacy.