Daniel Bergey

When I lived with my parents in Maryland, I tried my hand at operating my own web design business, Oak Lawn Design, after the torrent of oak leaves that fall every year from the ~50 trees on my parents’ 9/10ths of an acre. I set up a website, got a business phone line, a toll free number, a fake fax number from eFax, and an ad in a local business directory.

I think I got maybe three real calls from that ad in two years. One was a kid asking if I was hiring. Another was a real client, but it was too little, too late — they called after I’d decided to stop trying and close down.

Anyway, I had a really nice, easy-to-remember phone number. I had it forwarded to my cell phone, and kept it for a long time after letting O.L.D. slide. It seems that lots of people before me had it, though, judging from the kinds of wrong numbers I got.

To date, I’ve recieved calls from people looking for:

• “Household Financial”
• Oak Lawn Memorial Cemetery (not sure how they got that from Design)
• Some motel (Caller: “Room 214, please.” Me: “What?”)
• Someone named Bridget. Bridget has a lot of friends.
• An animal hospital. An older lady ignored my recorded greeting and left me a message asking if we had any dogs that nobody wanted, because she needed a companion. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t call her back.

And that doesn’t even include all the people that called to ask me to do their landscaping. Next time I start a business, I’m going to do more thinking about what to call it.