The Gambit

What with the new emptiness of my nest at home, I've taken to sticking around in the office for the last few months after the official end of "office hours". It's a chance to get completely caught up on all the paperwork, see an extra patient or two if they call with something acute, answer the phones and do some writing if it's quiet. An interesting by-product of my new schedule is that there are far fewer messages on the machine in the morning. Another is that I've picked up some very interesting phone calls:

(slightly breathless with urgency) Oh, hi. I'm calling from XYZ Supplies. I just wanted to let you know that the gloves you like have been discontinued, so I've put aside two cases for you. Will that be enough?

WTF?

Interesting gambit; unfortunately, the poor thing has no idea that I do all my own ordering, and have never even heard of XYZ Supplies, not to mention never having bought gloves from them. As it happened, I wasn't in the mood to play that particular afternoon, so I just told her we'd never done business with her company and our phone number is on the Do Not Call list. Never heard anyone hang up quite so fast. But what fun I missed out on:

Oh no! The doctors LOVE those gloves. Can't you manage to get us at least five cases to hold us over? No, this isn't Dr. Dinosaur's office; it's Ginormous Medical Practice. Just fax the forms over; here's our fax number. [Don't ask me why I have GMP's fax number memorized.] Could you please put a rush on that? Oh, do you still carry those top-of-the-line EKG electrodes? We're running low on those. Yes, ten cases should be plenty. Can you just put it on our account like you usually do? What? Sure, my name is Tom. Say, did Donna have her baby yet? We usually deal with her, but I know she was due to go out on maternity leave.

See how long she can keep up her end of the conversation.

Hey, I can BS with the best of them, having been taught (raised, that is) by the best.