Incident #1-My former boss went by his middle name both personally and professionally. Let's say his name was Robert Jonathan and he went by Jon. He was sort of an oversharer so I knew a great deal about his personal life/financial life, etc. On top of that I had a close professional rel
ationship with his wife. All this is to say I very well knew about Jon's personal and professional life.
So one day I get a call from someone with a quite thick accent asking for Robert. I immediately knew that this was not someone who knew Jon; it was a dead giveaway. I asked who was calling and was told "a business associate." I probed for more information and was haughtily told that it was none of my business but that he and Robert were involved in a very lucrative business dealing and that I had better put the call through now or he would certainly see that I was fired. Of course I knew this was a total scam so I told him that "Robert" was out of the office and offered to take his name and phone number. He refused and actually asked for his cell phone number. I terminated the conversation at that point. Jon and I often joked about how I had screwed him out of a "lucrative business deal."
Incident #2: I guess my DH does listen to me sometimes. The phone rings one day and he answers it. I hear from his side of the conversation that it's someone claiming that we have won something. I instantly go on alert, listening to make sure he doesn't start giving out info that he shouldn't. After a few moments, he says, "I'm going to let you talk to my wife about this."
He tells me quickly that it's someone claiming we've won a trip to Montreal to go to a concert to see a very popular band perform. Sounds sketchy to me.
I take the phone from him, and fully expect that it's a scammer. The first words out of my mouth are "Whatever you say, I will
not be giving you my credit card number." The caller starts laughing and says "I don't want your cc number!" He's a DJ at a local radio station-and I recognized his voice easily-and we really did win the contest. I asked my DH if he remembered entering it and sure enough he did; the radio station had their step-van parked in front of his workplace one day, and as he was walking by they called him over and gave him a hat, a bumper sticker and had him sign up for the contest. He didn't give it any thought afterward.
We did take the trip and it was great, even though the concert got cancelled b/c the lead singer had an injury and couldn't perform. But even that didn't bother us, because we actually had seen that band play, on the same tour, a couple of months before, when they played in our city!
