You’ve Got the Wrong Number

In keeping with the theme from my previous post, here is another true story from my consulting days. Some of these are just too good not to share.

I was auditing the employee safety program for a beer can manufacturer in Fort Worth. The audit was not going very well for the client because each time I would ask for some type of OSHA-required documentation, the safety manager would have to admit they didn’t have it. But when I asked him if the facility had a bomb threat plan, he perked up like a puppy who just heard the refrigerator door open. With the pride of a sixteen-year-old boy behind the wheel of his first truck, he said, “We didn’t use to, but we got one now.” 

Well, this response sent up a big red flag, so I asked him what happened that he felt the need to create a plan. 

He told me that one day a few months earlier, his administrative assistant’s phone rang. She was in the adjacent office, and he could clearly hear her speaking. 

“Oh, you want to report a bomb in our plant?” he heard her say. “Well, you’ve got the wrong number. Security takes all the bomb threats.” One would get the idea that bomb threats were an everyday occasion.  

She provided the caller with the number for the plant security office, hung up the phone and immediately called security telling them that someone was about to call in a bomb threat. Sure enough, this fool called the number she had given them, and security was able to identify the caller who turned out to be the wife of a recently terminated employee.  

Hearing her boss’s description, the administrative assistant chimed in from her desk, “Yeh, I knew who it was calling ‘cause I recognized her voice. She’s dumber’n a jar full of toe jam and I knew she’d call any number I gave her.” The safety manager told me he felt they might not be that lucky the next time so, he wrote a bomb-threat procedure.