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Dialing and dollars When the Helpers Ask for HelpBy Rick Horowitz
It must have been my voice that did it. It's a lively voice, a mellow voice, a voice that says its owner is a man of the world. (This isn't even vaguely accurate, but anyway...) On this particular day not so long ago, I was using my lively/mellow/worldly voice to track down a phone number from Directory Assistance. But instead of a computerized answer, I got a human question: "Do you know anything about stocks?" This was a first for me. I've been calling Directory Assistance for years; some days, it's practically all I do. And the conversation, such as it is, is generally pretty one-sided: I ask the questions, they provide the answers. Occasionally, they'll ask for more detail -- "Is that the Mad Cow Lounge, or the Mad Cow Grill?" Most of the time, though, it's pretty perfunctory -- "Hold for that number," they'll say, or "I don't show a listing for that." I did have a guy recently, in the midst of one of my major dial-a-thons, who wondered, "Didn't you call a few minutes ago?" He thought he recognized the voice. (He was right.) But that's the exception. This is the rule: They don't do chitchat. And they never ask for advice. Until this one. "Do you know anything about stocks?" He sounded young, with just a hint of a twang to him. These days, of course, the part of the country you're calling about and the part of the country that takes your call don't have to have anything to do with one another. They've all got access to the same vast data bank of digits, so it's entirely possible that your search for some number in Pennsylvania is being handled by an operator in Nebraska, or Nevada. But if I had to guess, this guy was from Kentucky, or maybe Tennessee. And young -- definitely young. (Of course, voices can be deceiving.) I had told him what I was looking for, and he had told me he was checking his computer, and while he was waiting for my number to pop, he popped his question. "Do you know anything about stocks?" "I'm afraid not," I said. (Which is totally accurate.) And then, because I may be highly uninformed but I'm still curious: "Why?" "I've saved up $2000," he explained. "I want to invest it in oil, or maybe McDonald's." I'd heard of oil. I'd heard of McDonald's. I'd even eaten things at McDonald's that were cooked in oil. That was the extent of my expertise. I wasn't sure that was good enough. And I found myself wondering about him, about the kind of guy who would solicit investment advice from a total stranger -- and not even a total stranger he'd just met on a bus somewhere, but a total stranger he'd never met at all, just a voice over a phone line! Was this guy the adventurous type, the kind who'd throw a dart at a chart, be willing to let it all ride on one roll of the dice? He didn't sound adventurous. (Of course, voices can be deceiving.) Or was he the kind of guy who simply felt he had to do something to keep up -- that everywhere he looked, everything he read and heard, other people were jumping into this stock-market thing and riding the rocket higher and higher, that he had to jump in and get his, too, before it was too late. (Or was it already too late?) Was he a guy so desperate not to miss out on the boom times, so eager for the big score, that he'd risk his life savings on the word of some mellow-voiced stranger in his ear? "I'm afraid not," I said to him again. "I don't really know anything about it." He thought about that for a second -- maybe I wasn't the only one who'd declined to offer stock tips over the phone, maybe he'd been asking the same question for days and getting nowhere -- and then he decided. "I'm just gonna go to a stockbroker and learn." "Sounds like a good idea," I agreed, and I wished him luck. "Hold for your number," he said. Posted 3/13/01. Stock
tips? Call a stockbroker. Award-winning commentary? You're exactly where
you ought to be.
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Rick Horowitz
