Just in case we were in any doubt, further proof this week that big business blows. Like the companies that make the milk telling us that it is OUR fault it’s not cheaper, because we don’t shop around enough. Wankers.
What about the little fact that all the supermarkets are owned by only two companies? There’s your competition right there. Servos are so expensive with things like bread and milk you might as well buy petrol and pour that on your weetbix. But again, big business owners, so no real surprise and we all know the tight buggers that run the corner dairy are not going to undercut no bastard.
Small businesses on the other hand, don’t blow. I was reminded of something a few weeks ago when I saw the story of the Nelson fish & chip shop that is losing money thanks to some noob that keeps ringing and placing a huge order that he never collects.
This story struck a chord with me because 20 years ago I was that kid and as funny as it was back then I realise now, as a fully pubed adult, that somebody inevitably suffers with a prank such as this and in the case of a small business it’s usually the owner.
Still, it’s bloody funny. Well at least it was back in the day when Willie G and I used to wag school and call up all the local takeaway shops. Quite why alarm bells weren’t ringing in these places when a kid - admittedly a deep voiced one at that - was placing a huge order in the middle of the day I shall never know.
Not that we were content just placing fake orders; in a similar vein we’d often ring people and in our best pigeon Mandarin claim that the person listed in the phonebook had a tab with us which now needed to be paid. Quite what the Golden Dragon in Naenae did with all the money that confused strangers came in and paid on nonexistent accounts we’ll never know, but we should probably have asked for a cut.
Incidentally I’ve always had a deep voice and from an early age and it was in no way related to the size, or sling, of the man berries because they let me down on both counts right throughout my teens. I mean they’re enormous now, obviously, that’s what the wheelbarrow beside my desk is for…
Like most kids my age in Third Form I had very little interest in school or authority and had a peer councillor, Steven, our Seventh Form class prefect who did an okay job but to be fair was more interested in getting his hands on our other class prefect and I don’t blame him, she was tidy. During one of the many him-me-Guidance Counsellor session’s that only exist to employ such people in schools, Steven endeared himself to me by blurting out halfway through a very heavy conversation about just why I was such a little shit “But he has such a deep voice….its so funny”.
By far the biggest and bestest phone prank we pulled (and I say ‘we’ only to try and deflect some of the blame now that I feel genuinely bad about it) was the time we phoned in a 30 kid birthday party for a mate at Maccas. Again, pubescent boy on the phone making detailed plans regarding another pubies party, hello?
But pulled it off we did and a couple of days after the ‘party’ date had come and gone our mate was telling us that Mum & Dad had been called by a furious Maccas Manager and been given an invoice for 30 unclaimed Happy Meals! Yes, it was still hilarious, but we did feel a tinge of regret so we didn’t tell our mate it was us who’d made the call. Everyone else we told of course, just not him.
So I feel for the guy in Nelson and his unclaimed phantom orders, like I do my mate. Still, there is a small part of me that is stoked to see the prank call is alive and well.
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