Chatterers

I answer the phones at my office, and believe me, I field some pretty strange calls. From time to time, I'll get what I call a "chatterer" - someone who doesn't really want to hire our company, who doesn't even understand what it is we do exactly, but who just wants to talk.

Some old guy called today and went on and on and on about this building he rents, how it's possibly chemically contaminated, how the landlord isn't giving him any answers, and blahblahblah. He didn't sound crazy, just lonely, and I wasn't that busy, so I just let him go on until he ran out of words (about twenty minutes).

There used to be an old lady who called here wanting to talk about a bridge that was on the road she lived on, and how she thought it was unsafe, but the State said it was ok, and ..... you get the picture. Eventually she'd segue into stories about her grown daughters, her deceased husband, etc. She hasn't called here for a couple of years, and sometimes I wonder what happened to her.

I just think it's so sad that there are lonely, needy people out there who have no one to talk to. Or maybe they do have people to talk to, lots of people, but need more people to talk to. Maybe they could tell their story to everyone in the world and still be looking for someone to talk to.

Maybe that's why I have this blog - so I'll never run out of people to talk to.