Story Time: Never Call an Adult Phone Line at Work

I thought it might be fun… or at least humbling… to share the occasional embarrassing anecdote from my career in this blog. I’m not revealing any secrets as those who know me have probably heard these stories at least once and I offer no names but my own. There may also be a moral in here somewhere but mostly I just view these as cautionary tales… at best. So, I give you the first – and maybe last based on how this goes over – Story Time.

Fair warning… this one is just a little bit risque so proceed at your own discretion.

Many years ago, I was asked to lead a project that was going to launch a much shorter application for our term life insurance products – something like a 2 page form down from 20+. For the agents selling the product, this would obviously be a huge time saver and would hopefully attract more business to our company. It would be called EasyApp.

As part of my responsibilities, I coordinated a weekly conference call between our team and the vendor we were working with. On this fateful day, we had a few minutes before the call was to start and so folks on our side were reviewing the agenda. It included an item about selecting an 800# that the agents could call to find out the status of the application. Innocent enough, right?

Well, one of our senior vice presidents decided to join us that day and he got to that item about the phone number and piped up “1-800-Easy-App”. I quickly counted the letters and realized it would work so I said I’d check on it’s availability and let folks know. Our executive, however, just waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the phone implying that I should try it right now before the conference call got started.

I gamely picked up the handset, punched in the number and waited. Within a few moments the line stopped ringing and music started playing. I announced to the room that the number was taken… and then made my big mistake.

Rather than just hang up the phone, I must have felt the need to prove what I’d reported and so I punched the speakerphone button. The music played for a couple of seconds more and then a woman’s sultry voice came on and said:

“Now that your hand is down your pants…”

My face turned six shades of red and I recall just swatting at the phone, trying to either mute the volume or disconnect the line and I mercifully managed to hang up. You see, what I didn’t realize until later is that the letters “P” and “S” are both found on the number 7. That means that 1-800-Easy-App is also 1-800-Easy-A**.

So, yes… I called an adult phone line at work.

While in a meeting.

And put it on speakerphone.

In front of one of the most senior executives in the company.

(I’m not sure I how I top this one but if you enjoyed this little exercise in humility, let me know in the comments below and I’ll see if I cannot work in the occasional life lesson from Chris into the rotation.)