Because I work at home, I have a second phone line installed in my office.  It’s used strictly for business, and it’s set up such that calls to my business line are forwarded to this phone.  The phone itself has no voicemail or answering machine, since my company is paranoid about communications being stored on devices outside of corporate control.  That’s all handled by the forwarding service.  It’s actually kind of handy, since messages left at my business line can be sent to me in an email and I can get faxes without having to connect a fax machine (the service stores them and I can get to them on a website).

Anyhow, I never give anyone the actual number of this phone, since it’s only intended for forwarding.  If someone I know wants to call me, they’ll use my regular number or my cell.  But I can always tell when it’s the beginning of the month, since this phone starts ringing every few hours.  It appears that the previous owner of the number skipped out on some debts and the collectors seem to get busy around the beginning of the month.

I have to answer this line, since even with caller-ID I can’t be certain whether it’s for work or not (the majority of these collectors don’t show a name, only a number if I’m lucky).  The ones that can’t be arsed to use a real person get under my skin a bit, but what’s really starting to irk me, though, is that the mouth-breathing morons haven’t figured out after two years that I’m not the guy they’re looking for.  I even had one of the more idiotic ones ask me if I knew where the guy had moved to!  Hello!?  How in the name of John Moses Browning am I supposed to know that!?  I’m just the poor schmuck who ended up with the deadbeat’s number.  Now quit bothering me and take this number off your lists!

Anyone know a keysequence to send down the line that will set the caller’s phone on fire?