Everyone knows the best thing to do with an incoming phone call from a number you don’t recognize, at a time when you’re not expecting a call, is to ignore it. Everyone knows it’s probably going to be a scam call. Everyone knows that if it’s not a scam call, it’ll go to voicemail, and you’re experiencing any suspense about what’s up, you’ll be able to find out in 30-ish seconds. 

And everyone knows that if you pick up a scam call, you’re just going to have your number flagged by scammers as a number that picks up, and that as such, they should call this number again sometime in the future. 

I don’t remember why I picked up the phone when an unfamiliar number, from an area code of a city where I didn’t think I knew anyone, called me that afternoon. Maybe I picked up on the off chance that it was someone who worked with one of the businesses I was working for as a freelancer. Maybe I was just in a mood, and I really wanted to hand it to someone for having the nerve to try to grift me in the middle of a work day, for god’s sake. Maybe it was a slip of the thumb. But I picked up, and I thought, Welp. Guess I’m on a list now. Too late to turn back.

After a silent beat, I heard the off-receiver chatter of a call center, of course. Another beat, and then the wind-up. “Hello, this is your credit card service, and I am calling to verify some recent activity on your card. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking to?” I mean, that’s always the wind-up. No mention of the name of the business, no indication they know who they’re calling. At times when I’m already annoyed, I feel insulted that anyone would think I was stupid enough to fall for that line. And I was pretty annoyed. I was ready to let fly with a Do you really wanna face death knowing you devoted your life to robbing people’s grandmas? Is the money really worth it? How do you feel going to bed at night, knowing that millions and millions of people hate your fucking guts? 

But instead – I paused. Look. I knew I didn’t know anything about what this person’s life was like. I had no idea what had gone on in their own past to bring them to the point when they were sitting in a call center, working a job that involves nothing but trying to scam people internationally, over and over, every day. Whatever they had gone through to get here, it probably wasn’t great. Which itself is not much of an excuse. Having a rough life doesn’t simply erode your moral core and leave you helpless to making an obviously, objectively immoral decision. 

And people are all over the place in what they assume about scam call center workers. There are people who’ll say, “Yeah, they’re all horrible people. They do it because there’s big money in it. There are other things they could do for a living, but they’ve chosen this one on their own accord, because it’s easy, and they stay because they’re too greedy to walk away.” And there’s been plenty of reporting that reveals some truth to those assumptions. There are people who’ll say, “Don’t take out your anger on these people. They’re victims. They’ve been trafficked, and they’re held captive and forced to perform slave labor in call centers.” And there’s been reporting that reveals some truth to those assumptions, too. There are things I can think I can “safely assume,” but on what basis? I can’t really assume, with close to no meaningful context, anything about how this scammer got to be a scammer.

I cycled through that whole thought process in the seconds after the caller asked my name. And I thought, Nothing good is actually going to come out of yelling at this guy. I don’t need to tell him anything he already knows. I just want him to not do this to people. If I could just waste a minute of his time – that’s a minute he wouldn’t be able to try to scam someone more gullible than I. 

And I decided that the way to keep him tied up for a minute would be to start breathing heavily. Loudly, and as creepily as possible. The sound of the rattling lungs of a withered sexual predator living in a toolshed in a large swamp.

I took a deep breath. Hhhhuhhhhhhhssshhhhhh… … HhhhhhuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhHHHHNNGGHHUHHHHhh. Hhhhhheeeeeehhhhhhhhhooohhhhhrrrhhrhrr… … … HHHHHHHHHnnnnnnnnnnnnnnuuuuuUUUHHHHUHHHHHMMMMnnngggguhhhrrrRRHRNNNnnmmmmmhhh. HhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHNNnnnNN —

I went on like this for several very long and very creepy breaths. It was working. He was still on the line, and I was wasting his time, harmlessly. Strangely, I guess, but harmlessly.

And then I heard on the other end of the line, quietly: Hhhhhhhehhehhhehhhhehhhhhhhh. Hhhhhhehhheehhhehhhh.

He was heavy-breathing right back at me. 

We kept going back and forth with each other. Or, more accurately, we were heavy-breathing at each other at the same time. So I decided to ramp up the volume and the creep factor. Me: UUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHNNNNNUUUUUUUUUUGHHHHHHNNNNNMMMM HHHHHUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuuunnhhhhh – g – g – GGGGHHHHHHUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHH –

Him: Hhhhheeeeehhhhhhhhhh. Hhhhhhhhheeeeeehhhhhhhh.

Me: EEEEEEHHHHHHOOOOOOOUUUUEEEHHHHHH HHHHHHH – HHHNN – HHNN – UUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHNNNMMMM –

Him: Hhhhhhheeeeeehhhhhhhh. Hhhhhhhhhheeeeeehhhhhh.

This went on for several seconds longer than I had expected. 

Finally, in mid-heavy breath, the audio from his end cut out. He had hung up. 

And I thought, Wow. We really just had a moment right there. This phone scammer guy and I really connected.

I wondered what it meant, what I was supposed to take away from it all. Here was this brief sliver of time when I and a scammer in a call center, probably on opposite sides of the globe from each other, were sharing something unique. Our paths never would have crossed out in the physical world, not in our entire lives. And yet – here we were, two very different people, leading assuredly radically different lives, with extremely different goals and plans for the day, operating in tandem with each other, doing this deeply strange thing that we both tacitly agreed was the right thing to do with that particular moment.

But let’s not shit ourselves. It didn’t mean anything. It was just a thing that would have been unlikely to happen with any two people in that particular setting, but that happened anyway. And it was a minute in which one very small cog in a gigantic, vile machine got jammed up, without anyone getting hurt. I hope that guy enjoyed it, at least.