Laff of the Day #6

I share an office phone with Joe the Banker. It's a pretty ghetto setup. One office, two phone lines, five people.

Also, our phones are just phones. They don't have speaker phone, mute, hold, voicemail or volume control. They look like this:

Technically if you turn the phone upside down there is a knob that you can slide to adjust the receiver volume. Or maybe it's the ringer volume.

Either way, the knob doesn't work.

Why don't we have modern day phone technology? It has something to do with the grinding bureaucracy we work for at NYU, and how it's also woven into the grinding bureaucracy of Bellevue Hospital.

Today someone called for me, and Joe the Banker picked up.

"Hello, Peds I.D.," he said. We work in the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, or peds I.D. for short. And it's pronounced "peeds I.D."

"Sure, one moment," J-the-B said, and motioned for me to pick up the line on my phone. Yes, the old-fashioned one-phone, two-lines setup.

"This is Justina," I said. It was the other project coordinator, the Noob. She was giggling.

"Just...wanted...to...let...you...know," she gasped between giggles, "...you...forgot...to...include...an...attachment...with...your...last...email."

"I know, I'm sending it out again," I said. "And stop laughing at me. It's not funny."

"I'm...not...laughing...at...you," the Noob said, still giggling.

"Whatever. I'm resending the attachment," I said. I was sort of annoyed that she thought it was so funny that I had forgotten to attach a file to my email.

A few minutes later she emailed me the following note:

Sorry, I wasn't laughing about the attachment; I've done that a million times. I was laughing because the person who answered the phone said, 'Hello, this is P. Diddy.' 

Don't you have your own phone line?

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And that's how Joe the Banker became P. Diddy.