The Crossed Phone Line

By Todd Maguire on September 11, 2014 in Other

It was a very sad day when Ping’s Chinese restaurant closed. After twenty years of serving up some of the best Asian food this side of Darwin, it was time for the owner to hang up his wok, pack up his order book and move on to retirement. Ping had served the local area well. Generations of families had grown up chomping on his spring rolls, special fried rice and world-beating banquet meals.

Angela lived just around the corner from Ping’s restaurant, and it had been a tradition to enjoy a slap up meal each Thursday with a few of her lady friends. They would be treated like royalty by Ping as they lapped up the atmosphere of the restaurant: the vinyl floor and tables, the tattered pictures of the Great Wall of China, a dusty old Buddha and other Asian knick-knacks that had been in place for every one of those twenty years.

Times change and people have to change with them, but when the new restaurateurs moved in with their brash ways, fancy fare and outrageous prices, this little part of town changed immensely. Talk of the new restaurant was on everyone’s lips. It was somehow getting great reviews and people were lining up just to get a taste of the gourmet cuisine. The manager was a spoilt brat television personality and the restaurant was devised to keep him off the streets and out of trouble. As with most pains in the backside, misfortune followed this fellow wherever he went.

From the day of opening, Angela began getting phone calls for the restaurant. Apparently their phone number was only one digit different to Angela’s, and there would constantly be crossed phone lines. This caused great confusion.

Angela fronted the restaurant manager about the issue, but she was treated like a leper.

“There’s no way we can change our phone number,” the slimy manager said. “We have printed advertisements, designed an expensive website and it seems most phone calls are getting through to us anyway.”

Angela left the restaurant upset at the treatment and headed home. She contacted the phone company and they gave her the run-around as well. All they could offer was for her to change her own number to avoid the crossed lines.

Angela had held the same number for over ten years and was not really prepared to change to suit the new restaurant. She was disappointed, but figured life would go on.

As she made a cup of tea, her phone rang. It was intended for the restaurant, so Angela played along for a bit of fun.

“Yes, sir. We can make that booking for six people for eight o’clock this evening. We look forward to seeing you.”
Angela smiled when the phone rang again.

“No problem, but can you please deliver 50 kilos of smoked salmon rather than just 10 kilos?”

And again.

“Sorry, we are closed all next week; please call us in a fortnight sir. And don’t even think of bringing any of your rotten little kids to our restaurant!”

She slammed the phone down and laughed.

Angela kept this up for two weeks as the phone calls came flooding in. She took loads of bookings, ordered unwanted extra supplies, maintained a high level of rudeness to potential customers and even abused the local health inspector when he phoned, just to heat things up a bit.

Back at the restaurant, the slimy manager was at his wits end at all the drama he was suddenly being dealt. Diners were turning up without a booking, he was wasting food supplies left right and centre, and the health department was onto him like hairs on a bar of soap.

As with all fiascos, social media got hold of the goings on and managed to bring the restaurant to its knees. People stopped coming, others abused the manager for stuffing up bookings and the restaurant eventually closed its doors.

The icing on the cake came early one Tuesday morning. Angela received her final crossed phone line conversation. It was a real estate agent with a potential buyer for the restaurant. When Angela agreed to sell the business and premises for a ridiculously low price, the agent was around there in about four minutes flat with a contract of sale in his hand.

Angela was triumphant. With everyone a food connoisseur these days, it’s sometimes a short trip from the penthouse to the outhouse in the restaurant caper. And as luck would have it, old Ping’s nephew, Pong, moved into the vacant restaurant and continued on with the tradition of excellent Asian fare.