Living for Disco

One thing about life here that does annoy me occasionally is the culture of the missed call.  I’ve never come across it in the UK, and the first few times it happened here I thought my phone was faulty.  But no, missed calling is a national pastime, second only to eating meat.

Your phone rings, and, if you’re me, you get all excited because Somebody Loves You, and then you realize that some idiot wants you to spend all your phone credit calling them, even though they want to talk to you.  The disappointment can be crushing.  Crushing, I tell you.

There are some instances when a missed call is acceptable.  If you work with someone, for example, and they want you to call them back on the office phone.  Or if you’re letting someone know you’re outside their house, and can they come out and let you in.

I don’t like it, however, when someone I barely know calls me and hangs up, and then expects me immediately to return the call.  Because, boy oh boy, if you don’t call back within half a nano-second, they will call you again.  And hang up.  Again.  And again.  I once had seven missed calls in a row from someone I’d called by mistake.  “Sorry, wrong number!” I said cheerfully, but that wasn’t quite enough for him, obviously.  If I’d known who he was, I’d have hunted him down, put the phone on vibrate, made him insert it up his back passage, and then spent the next hour ringing him.

It’s just bloody cheeky.  Just because I’m white doesn’t mean I afford to yak on for hours to some almost total stranger any more than anyone else. If you want to talk to me that badly, then pay for it yourself.

And if your house is, in fact, on fire, and mine is the only number left on your smoke-logged phone, then you might just have an excuse, but if you’ve got enough money on there to ring me, then you’ve got enough money to yell “Help!  I’m burning!” into the receiver before expiring.

So.  Missed calls.  The only thing more annoying is  a mosquito in your undercrackers.