Hello? Hello?

Up until recently, my older brother and I worked at the same phone support company. We had to field calls from customers and help them with their software. It was a really boring job, so I tried to find ways to liven it up. That usually meant using a fake Scottish accent on my calls or seeing how loudly I could get the customer to speak by telling them I was having trouble hearing them. Most often, though, I liked to mess with my brother.

He and I sound exactly alike on the phone, so I would stand directly behind him and repeat whatever he said half a second after he said it. The customer usually didn’t think anything of it at first because it just sounded like the phone was echoing, but it really got to my brother. He usually couldn’t stop himself from laughing out loud. So I would perfectly imitate his laugh to continue the illusion. This is usually when it went bad. The customer would want to know why he was laughing for no reason and I would continue the echoing to make him laugh harder. So all the customer could hear was an unnecessary echoing laugh, which made it all the more hilarious for my brother. He usually had to put them on hold and make up some excuse for the laughter and echoing. More often than not he had to hang up. It wasn’t until I remembered that our managers record the calls that I stopped doing it. I didn’t get in trouble because it really did sound just like an echoing phone. But my brother got fired.