The Ghost of Alison Kinsey
Last night I was enjoying a round of drinks at the dirtiest dive bar in downtown Austin with good friends. We sat in our usual spot…next to the corner where I accidentally broke a glass and the pool table where I accidentally broke a cue (seriously, both accidents…). One of my friends began telling a story about his day at work. He is a fantastic storyteller, and I love listening to him tell me about his life, his ideas, and anything else he could possibly conjure.
He packed his cigarettes slowly and looked into my eyes–honestly afraid, or was he simply baffled? I do not know. As he slapped the fresh pack of menthol cigarettes on the fat of his hand he regaled us with a tale I now wish to share. Ripping the thin plastic wrapper from his cigarettes he began…
The day before he had received a call at work. How ordinary…as that is all we do…take calls. Yet, this call would begin the most interesting of discussions. After the call was routed through thousands of miles of electrical cable and circuity it came steaming into his cubicle, hot and ready. As sometimes happens, a profile automatically pulled up on his computer screen. The name read Alison Kinsey.
He lit his cigarette, feet from the smoking prohibited sign that graced our general space. He went on…after he picked up and said his standard Dell greeting he waited for a response, only to receive dead air. A ghostcall. The bane of a telephone salesmen’s existence. These happen from time to time–a personless call, a phantom on the telephonic network. They count against all of your key metrics…close rate, margin per call, average handle time, and on and on…they are truly the most annoying part of this job.
While he waited in silence, counting the seconds until he could compliantly hang up, he noticed that this profile had well over 600 notes within it. Most customer profiles do not have any notes, so this was by all means special. He began to read them. Taking another slow drag from his minty cigarette, he told me that the notes were riddled with complaints about this number–a ghostcall phenomenon, or worse yet…
A voice comes across the line.
“Hello..?!”
“Thank you choosing Dell, what may I build for you today?”
A woman is there and after some basic questioning it is revealed that her name is not Alison Kinsey. He follows through to conclusion and it becomes obvious that the call is fraud. The call ends and he logs out for a brief moment to read deeper into these notes left by other reps. Soon it becomes apparent that this number, Alison Kinsey, is a legend within Dell. Other reps wrote of how they had received three calls from her within a matter of hours; other complained of the attempted fraud. All cried out for Dell to do something, anything about this number.
One note read, “My first day in Gold Queue (our top queue) and I finally got Alison…today is a good day.” Lighting another cigarette, my friend told me that it appeared a rite of passage…a to-do at Dell…to speak to Alison Kinsey, or the pretender on the other end. Blowing minty smoke in my direction, he continued…
It is the next day, the very day he is telling me his tale, and he is sitting at his cube. A call comes flying in, hot and ready. It pulls up a profile–Alison Kinsey. He curses. Not twice? He picks up, and as usual, it is silent. He takes the opportunity to add to the collective sentience, to the history of this damned profile, and he writes, “Twice in two days. I guess I’m in.” He then glances up to investigate the number associated with the profile…the number that brings Alison Kinsey into your life.
1-800-283-3355.
The phone call is coming from within Dell.
The ghost of Christmas past. Alison Kinsey. He crushes the lit cherry of his second minty cigarette into the table–the place is in need of some color, even if it is a chalky burnt black. Leaning back in his chair, eyes huge, he nods. Yes, we heard him correctly. The number was our own. Alison Kinsey was our own.
So, I began to wonder. Was Alison Kinsey the first person these fraud artists attempted to rip off? Was her name the unfortunate one to grace the customer profile associated with our own number? Or was Alison Kinsey the figment of some creative reps imagination, who one day decided to give this amazingly haunting profile a more human name?
Who is Alison Kinsey? And why does she call the same number she’s calling from?
I’m sure it is quite simple…a scam artist’s attempt to cover their own tracks by somehow having our number appear when they call, which in turn always brings up the profile of Alison Kinsey, but the dreamer in me likes to think bigger…greater…more fantastic…
The ghost of Dell. The ghost of Alison Kinsey.
Maybe one day…I’ll meet her, and write my own note. I think it will read, “Finally.”
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