Crabby Pants has an answering machine attached to his phone, through which the phone line travels.
This evening, a creditor called him and when they disconnected, CP's phone would not disconnect. He did not answer the call, ergo, the
answering/message machine picked it up for him.....and refused to disconnect. We were sitting here listening to the answering machine
go through it's clicks, whistles and screeches, while CP continued attempting to pick up the phone receiver and slam it down trying to
disconnect in that way. No success. He tried unplugging the phone line from the answering machine, but that didn't work either,
resulting in only a dead phone.
I handed him my phone, so he could call his phone company to see if they could repair it....even though I'd already told him that it was
a problem with HIS equipment, not the phone company's problem. I also reminded him of the countless times he'd grown angry with a
caller and slammed the receiver down over and over again hard enough that the phone shouldn't actually be in one piece right now. He said
that he hadn't done that in a long time (?????).
He spoke with his phone company for a minute and unplugged the phone from the answering machine again (just as he'd already done). No
success. They finally hung up on him.
Crabby Pants was very anxious to contact the creditor, because they're holding a hot check and tomorrow's the deadline.
I went over to the phone and unplugged the phone from the answering machine. I then went around the back of his recliner and sorted
through the spaghetti-like entanglement of wires until I located where the message machine was connected to his phone line and
unplugged the message machine from his phone line and plugged his phone directly into his phone line.
It works fine now, no problem-o......however, upon checking his watch, CP decided he would be late for the local college football game for which his friend had given him a ticket to see and decided he'd rush off to the game and call that creditor tomorrow....on Saturday.