No home phone

My God. People contact you through your wife's cell phone? Seriously? Are you two always at the same place at the same time?

 

No. But if I wanted them to be able to contact me all the time, I'd have my own cell phone.

 

You work in newspapers, right? How do you do that without a cell phone? Or at least a land line? I suppose if you were a copy editor or paginator, you could. But an editor or reporter? That'd be tough.

 

To date, nothing's come up that I couldn't handle on the work phone. And as far as I'm concerned, anything that pops up outside of my scheduled hours that week are the salaried editor's concern and not mine.

Keep in mind, though, I scrape by at a crappy, tiny daily. I'm barely a real reporter

 

Gotcha.

 

Got a question:
Is there any way to find folks cell phone numbers? You know, an (Internet) white pages for cell phones?
People crapping land lines is a big hinderance - from a reporter standpoint - in trying to get in touch with someone- cuase they aren't listed in the book.

 

There's a site called cellpages.com but it's voluntary. The Intelius background check people offer a reverse-lookup for cell-phone numbers but it costs you $15 for each number; also, using Intelius may lead to spontaneous charges being added to your credit-card bill without your knowing it.

Snopes put the myth about cell-phone numbers being made available to telemarketers a long time ago: http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/cell411.asp

There are other sites that claim to be able to do this, but I just tried to look my own number up on several and they can't even get my city right.

 

We have a landline at home, but I *never* give that number out. I always give out my cell phone if I want someone to talk to me. If not, tough shit.

When I was at my old shop, the CEO once asked for my home phone number. I actually asked, "why do you need my home phone number?" The reason she gave made me just say, "just give them my cell number."

Pretty much the only people who contact us on the landline are Mark's family and friends and Dad's family and friends. And telemarketers. It's been months since I got a call for me on the landline that wasn't someone I knew.

 

I used Intelius last month ($1.90 for two searches), and there were a couple of mysterious charges on my credit card bill. One for $29.95 and one for $19.95.

There is something in the fine print when you use it that subscribes you to a service --- and you are supposed to cancel before 7 days if you do not want it.

Slick and sneaky. I called both places, asked for and received a refund for those charges.

 

Last call I remember getting on a land line at my house was when work called to tell me about 9/11 and that the paper was thinking about doing an extra.

She has a land line but more for the DSL. The only time it rings its telemarketers.

 

I can't remember the last time I had a home phone. Just use the cell.

And my family doesn't have a home phone either.

 

So what would you do if, say, you're coming back from a prep game and get rear-ended. Can't leave the scene, but you're on deadline. You just leaving that salaried editor twisting in the wind back at the office?