11.15.2006

Money For Nothing

I had a funny conversation this afternoon with a guy that had left a nasty message with one of our staff members. He would only tell her that he was calling me "on a business matter." Since he had called before and since he was throwing down some attitude, I decided to call him back. He told me, quite indignantly, that he had tried to call many times before and then said, "I would like to know how you intend to structure the student loan that you defaulted on." Not ever having defaulted on a loan in my life, I politely pointed that out to him. Of course, he didn't believe me. "You are Barry K. Green, a lawyer, aren't you?" "Uh, no." I said. (That "K" doesn't belong to me.) "You weren't born in 1956?" (Thankfully, I could answer that with a "hell, no" - which I didn't - but I did suddenly feel sad for some 50 year old guy that had defaulted on a student loan.") While the debt collector was scribbling all the info down and sounding very confused on the phone, I decided to use The Google by typing in "Barry K. Green" followed by "attorney". I came up with a name and address of a guy by that name that was in Austin. So I told the collector, "Hey, I just found somebody by that name in Austin who is a lawyer." "Really!" he replied (and I am not making this up.) "Could you tell me his address and phone number?"