SYSMATT@ukcc.uky.edu (Matt Simpson) (07/20/90)
The joke about telling people to put plastic bags over their phone so the phone company could blow dirt out of the lines has been around for a while. Several years ago, when I lived in Dayton, Ohio, one of the morning DJs on a local radio station made that announcement several times one morning. I'd heard about the joke before, but this was the first time I'd actually heard it on the radio. Since it was an old joke, I figured it needed some originality added to it. So after about the third time he made the announcement, I called in, identifying myself as "calling from the phone company" ... I didn't say what phone company, so I couldn't be sued for impersonation. I thanked him for his public service announcements, but reminded him that he'd left out one important instruction, and asked him to please ask the users to make sure the plastic bag fit loosely enough for the dirt to blow into. If the bag was too tight, the resulting back-pressure when we blew the lines would cause the dirt to feed back into the lines, causing their neighbors to receive dirty phone calls. He taped that, and played it on the air. Apparently, he later got a call from the "real" phone company. The next day, he mentioned something about the conversation he had with the Ohio Bell people, and promised to play that, but I never got a chance to hear it. Apparently, the station didn't get the message that it's not wise to mess around with Ma Bell. About a year later, same station, their traffic reporter was touting their new cellular traffic reporting system. They had an arrangement with Cellular One, the non-wireline carrier in the area, so that Cellular One customers could press *-something on their phones to call the station to report traffic conditions, and not be billed for the air time. He pointed out that this would work only for Cellular One customers, and that it wouldn't work if "you have Ameritech or some other inferior brand of phone' (Ameritech is the mid-west RBOC which was the wire-line cellular carrier for the area, and also sold cellular phones through a subsidiary). Needless to say, the friendly folks at Ameritech were not amused. Their attorneys contacted the station, and settled for a retraction the next day, in the same time slot, explaining that there was nothing really wrong with Ameritech phones or service in the same general vein as blowing dirt out of the lines, one prank we used to pull when I was a kid was call someone and identify ourselves as telephone repair service. We would tell them that we would be working on their line for about the next hour, and it was very important that they not use the phone during that time. They should not make or answer any calls. If the phone rang, they should not answer it. This was very important. If they lifted their receiver in the next hour, our lineman would possibly receive a severe, even fatal shock. After about 15 minutes, we would call back. Let the phone ring long enough, and they'' eventually decide to pick it up ... when they do, scream like a dying lineman. [Moderator's Note: Aaargh! Enough already! PT]