Jill Murray

The weirdest thing happened to me at work the other day: the phone on my desk rang.

I’ve been working on contract in this one office since June. They were short on desk space when I arrived, and I took the client seriously when he joked that I’d have to make do without a phone.

“Cool, that’d be fine. Great even. No problem.” I told him. I’m a web chick. What do I need with phones? What year is this? 1876?

But two days later, someone came by and set up a phone, leaving me with a sheet of instructions on operating the phone, and informing me that my voicemail code was 12345. I promptly filed the sheet in the scrap paper bin, and the following Monday, when a new contractor started at the desk opposite mine, I all too happily told him he could take my phone since he didn’t have one. I barely use my mobile as it is.

And so it went for over three months. Contractors came and went from that desk, and used my phone. The only evidence that it was ever mine was the thin grey cable creeping over the semi-divider from my desk to theirs. Once every three weeks the phone would ring, and we would stare at each other over the divide, and then they, not I, would answer it, and calmly inform the misdirected caller that a wrong number had been reached. And I would let out the breath I’d been holding in, and we’d sink back into silence and will the day to return to normal.

Eventually something changed, and a new phone was set up on the other desk, and my phone returned to me. I asked the people-who-go-giving-out-phones-where-no-phones-is-wanted department if they could just take it away, and they laughed at me and said no. Within a few days I got used to having it there and not using it. I compensated for the space it took up by using it as a paperweight.

And then it happened. I got too comfortable. And the phone rang. On my desk. Everyone within a ten foot radius froze. I again locked eyes with the contractors across the divide. We stared down at the phone. And I sighed. There was no getting out of it. This time I would have to answer.

“Hello? Jill Murray speaking?” I whispered incredulously into the mouthpiece.

“Um.” said the voice on the other end. “This is Soandso? On the 24th floor?”

“Hi.”

“The phone— it is OK?” she said. “It is working?”

“Yes. I think it really is. Why?”

“Oh, well, the system sent out an alarm that your voicemail hasn’t been accessed in 47 days.”

“That’s correct,” I said, now trying not to laugh. “I have never accessed my voicemail.”

There was a pause.

“But WHY?” she spluttered.

“Oh, I don’t use the phone. I tried to get them to take it away, but they wouldn’t take it. You can still have it back if you want.”

“But how do you— what do you—” she trailed off. “But the phone isn’t broken then? The voicemail is functional?”

“The voicemail is brilliant. I love not accessing my voicemail.”

“OK then. Good day.”

So I guess I’m kinda stuck with this phone.