From playing Chinese Whispers as a kid to belting out the wrong words to a song, we’ve all had moments when we mishear things. Apart from the odd twinge of embarrassment, it doesn’t usually go far. But for Tyson ‘Jacko’ Kirvan, it went a hop, skip and a couple of kilometres further.
Jacko had been busily working in Sales at the Cleve branch of Ramsey Bros for a couple of years when he received a message from the admin team about a customer enquiry.
“The message was that Darryl Smith was keen to chat about a used tractor that we had listed on our website. I’d dealt with Darryl once before and sold him a piece of equipment in the past, so nothing seemed out of the ordinary.”
In the usual fashion, Jacko called Darryl back on the number left with the message and after a brief chat, made an appointment to meet him at his property that day.
“Darryl’s got a broad acre farm with sheep and a ram stud called Glenville, about 20km out of Cleve. I headed out there with plenty of time to meet him and was looking forward to seeing someone I’d dealt with before. I felt pretty confident I’d be able to help him with his enquiry about this tractor… but when I rocked up, there was no sign of him anywhere.”
Jacko checked the date, checked his watch and scratched his head before calling Darryl’s mobile again to ask whether he was far off. He knew he had the arrangement right but the plot thickened.
“I told Darryl I was waiting out the front of his house which was where it got weird because he insisted he was too. I walked around the house and kept looking around but there was no one in sight.
“I double checked that I was speaking to Darryl Smith and he confirmed that I was. Still doing loops to try and find him, the only thing I could do was ask him to pinpoint exactly where he was.
“It was a bit of a surprise when he answered, ‘Outside my house, on my property in Grenfell.’ I knew there wasn’t a Grenfell nearby and got the giggles when he added, ‘in New South Wales’.
“I was chatting to Darryl Smith alright and he was definitely keen to talk about tractors, but it wasn’t the same Darryl I’d helped in the past. As it turns out, there’s another farmer with the exact same name in a completely different state!”
A bit embarrassed, Jacko explained the error to his new-found-friend, Darryl in New South Wales and fortunately Darryl saw the funny side of it too.
“What are the chances that you’ll deal with two farmers with exactly the same name! But at the end of the day, the stuff up with words at least gave us a good laugh.”
