Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
In 1993, I was in grad school, but a friend of mine who was 2 years younger was still in undergrad and in the dorms. I came over to visit him, and while we were strolling through the hallway, I saw a bunch of people on the floor in one room, making prank phone calls.
We walked in there, I told everyone to move over and give me a shot, and I made various calls fucking around with local businesses.
I actually did a good job with the calls and everyone thought it was hilarious. It was almost all dudes in there, but there was one hot Asian girl there who was very impressed by my calls, and apparently was also really into tall white guys. So when I stood up, she started heavily flirting with me, which was awkward because I found out a short time after that my friend had a thing for her. But that's another story for another time.
Anyway, one of the calls was to McDonald's. The theme of that call was that I had been hoarding ketchup packets from the location, and purposely asking for more ketchup than I needed during each order, so I could do so. I "confessed" that it had turned into an obsession, and that I now had an entire bathtub full of McDonald's ketchup packets, all from that location. I claimed to be afraid of going to prison for this. I asked the woman on the phone if there was some sort of "ketchup amnesty program" where I could return the packets without getting into trouble.
The woman I was speaking to, who turned out to be the store manager, was very professional about it, even as I made the phone call progressively more ridiculous. When she told me I could just keep the ketchup packets and not worry about it, I told her that I feared I now had the compulsion to do it again, and asked how if she would be as understanding if I did this all over again.
Finally I did the big reveal that this was all a prank, and that a ton of people were in the background listening to the call. She was a very good sport about it, and in fact invited me to call back in the late hours when they typically aren't busy.
I was especially surprised by the offer to call back, as clearly she must have taken a liking to me enough to want me to call again and talk to her. However, I was only 21 at the time, and knew that she had to be older than me if she was the manager. Her voice sounded fairly young, though.
The dudes in the dorm were all telling me things like, "Dude, she wants you" and "You gotta go down there and fuck her", after we hung up. I wasn't ready to believe that stuff, but I was intrigued enough to call back.
Well, I did call when I was back alone at my apartment. She and I talked a long time. She was 27, white, and had moved from Anchorage a few years prior. She had a very nice personality, a good sense of humor, seemed intelligent, and was very easygoing. The problem? She was married.
I felt weird about the whole thing. I liked talking to her, but I wasn't looking to be a homewrecker. Still, I called her there a few times a week, and we would talk for awhile. I could tell she was enjoying the calls and was always excited to hear from me. In those days you couldn't get a picture sent to you without mailing one, but her description sounded attractive. I had to resist going down there to meet her in person, even though she invited me several times and even offered me a free burger if I did so (lol).
During one of the calls, she told me why she had left Alaska. Apparently she was previously married to a different guy, and everything was going well until the dude asked if she'd do a threesome with him. He didn't have any specific woman in mind for the threesome, but just wanted her to agree to do it so he could look for someone. She told him that she had no interest in this, and refused. Strange as it sounds, this destroyed the marriage. She said he became "obsessed" with convincing her to agree to the threesome, and started saying nasty and abusive things about her because she would not relent and agree to it. This led to a divorce, and she left Alaska to start fresh. She quickly met a new guy in California, fell for him, and got remarried.
This story made me feel especially guilty for talking to her so much and starting to develop interest. It would be one thing if she were in a shit marriage anyway, but she described her current husband as "really nice" and "the opposite of the first one".
For this reason, I tapered off the phone calls, until they stopped completely. One day months later, curiosity got the better of me, so I went through the drive thru and asked if she was working. She was, came over to the window, and I introduced myself. She acted happy to see me, and told me to pull around and come in and say hi. I dd that, she gave me the long-promised free meal (I didn't ask for it, she offered), and we sat and talked for maybe 20 minutes, and then I left and that was that. She was pretty and part of me wanted to start calling her again, but I decided it was best to stay away from the whole thing.
The end.