Mixed messages for a good Samaritan

AINE O’CONNOR

IALWAYS think that you should let the sender know if you get a text or email that is intended for someone else. It’s especially true when you know the sender, but it does no harm when you don’t.

Except, obviously, if they’re a prince looking to lodge millions in your bank account.

My logic is that someone thinks they have let someone know something and they’re waiting for a reply which, unless they know about their mistake, is never going to come.

I was with a friend when he got a message saying,

“Hi Brian, I am in Ireland, where is the meeting on?”

He, who is not called Brian, said he was just going to block the number.

I was baffled, wouldn’t he be a good Samaritan and let the lady know she had the wrong number. He rolled his eyes and told me I was naïve. Eh? I put forward the case for someone who had recently landed in Ireland and was now waiting for a reply from a ‘Brian’, so my friend shrugged and told the woman, whom he actually described as “the woman” with inverted comma fingers wiggling, that she had the wrong number.

Five minutes later he got an answer along the lines of, “Oh, thanks for letting me know, how are you anyway, would you like to meet up?”

With a smirk he turned to me, “Now can I block ‘her’, Mother Teresa?” I was fascinated and ascribed it to him being male and more likely to random approaches. Not a week later I got a late night message from a number, and accompanying male profile pic from someone I didn’t know. “I would eat you up.”

Okey-dokey. It might well have been intended for someone else but I didn’t feel like getting into it with him. Lesson learned. Block.