Written and Illustrated by Koriander Bullard This story takes place in 2014 and should serve as an idea of how the WWE handles a sticky situation.
So once upon a time, my husband used to be a wrestling promoter. We had an ex-employee who was a staffer. For the sake of not putting this guy over, let's pretend his name was “Timothy Mealy”. Timothy had quit the company, and then lied and told everyone he was fired, so imagine my surprise when I found out he had moved to a new state, and was telling people he still worked for us. I don’t know if Timothy understood this, but when you tell my husband “I quit” that means you are no longer an employee here. Timothy was siphoning a feed of the WWE Network off of a friend of his. Timothy would hook a Roku box up to an old VCR, record onto VHS tape episodes of Countdown, and then use a Roxio cable to convert the VHS episodes onto DVD. Timothy would then sell these HD-to-VHS-to-DVD discs at wrestling shows, claiming to be representing my husband's company. Ironically, every disc was sold for $9.99. Oh HELL no!! So one morning, I fumbled around and got the number to WWE Corporate. I was going to let them know we were NOT affiliated with this loser and that he was bootlegging (and poorly) WWE Network. When you call the number, you get a female robot, who is supposed to direct your call to the right department, based off of the initial phrase you give her. She works now, but the day that I called, there was a rare malfunction with the robot, sending me on a tailspin just trying to find the right area. Robot: Welcome to WWE! Please state in a few short words what your call is about. Me: Bootleg DVD. Robot:…. I'm sorry, I did not catch that. Me: BOOT LEG DEE VEE DEE. Robot: *Ba-DOOP * Packapackapacka. Sending you to Stephanie McMahon Levesque. Me: OH S*** Now, I was not prepared to talk to Stephanie, but I figure the robot must have figured out that Stephanie would want to know about this, seeing as how she is the boss's daughter. I did not get to talk to her, but I did get her secretary. She sent me back to the robot and told me to try again, apologizing for the trouble. Robot: Welcome to WWE! Please state in a few short words what your call is about. Me: Bootleg DVD. Robot:…. I'm sorry, I did not catch that. Me: BOOT LEG DEE VEE DEE. Robot: *Ba-DOOP * Packapackapacka. Sending you to Paul Levesque. Me: OH S*** Now I really don't care what your stance is on the current product. You may hate Monday Night Raw. You may not even be a current WWE fan. But no matter where you are in life, if you were a fan in the 1990's, you will regress to the state of an eleven year old the moment the robot tells you that Triple H is about to pick up the phone and speak to you. You may have hated D-Generation X, but you will suddenly turn eleven years old the instant you are transferred. And so I stand there, with less than two seconds to react. Oh snap…. His ringtone really is done by Motörhead. “TIME TO PLAY THE GAAAAAAAME!!!” rips through my cell phone, followed by the laughter of late singer Lemmy and a guitar riff alerting me to an oncoming meeting with Hinter Hearst Helmsley. You know what would suck about this moment? Swallowing a gnat. Which is exactly what I did as he picked up. HHH: Hullo? Me: ACK ACK ah ah ah?!?!?! HHH: … I don't know this number. Me: AH Wait A M- I'm back to the robot. Flustered and coughing up a gnat. Robot: Welcome to WWE! Please state in a few short words what your call is about. Me: *GAAAAAAASP * Boot… leg… DVD Robot:…. I'm sorry, I did not catch that. Me: BOOT LEG DEE VEE DEE. Robot: *Ba-DOOP * Packapackapacka. Sending you to Vincent Kennedy McMahon. Me: OH S*** This time, I did not have two seconds to figure out what to say. His secretary picked up the phone immediately. Secretary: Hi! Vince McMahon's office, how may I help you? Me: Oh hai. I would like to report a bootleg DVD. I explain to her how my morning has gone, with accidentally dialing both the boss's daughter and the boss's son in law, Timothy and the bootleg DVDs. Secretary: Can you hold on a sec? Me: Sure. Muffled voice: Mmm hmm hmm hmm HMM hmm hmm. Secretary: Well that was VINCE, and he said he's sorry about the robot, they're working on it now. Muffled voice: Mmm hmm hmm hmm HMM hmm hmm. Secretary: What's that? Muffled voice: Mmm hmm hmm hmm HMM hmm hmm. Secretary: Oh. Okay I'll tell her. He says that you need to call back on Thursday and ask for Keith in Fan Services. You want Keith's email? Vince says he's on vacation but will take your call on Thursday. I jot down the email address. Muffled voice: Mmm hmm hmm hmm HMM hmm hmm. Secretary: Oh, and Vince says to have a nice day. That Thursday, just as Vince McMahon said, I called Keith and gave him all of the information. I don't know what happened, but Timothy isn't selling bootleg DVDs anymore. Last I heard, he was working at some desk job. And I s*** you not, it pays $9.99 an hour. Koriander Bullard is an author, cartoonist and human rights advocate. Keep up with her on Facebook!
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