Stormin Mormon wrote:
I got a call on the answering machine. For my locksmith
business. "Do you do combination locks?"

Well, gee, lets see. Does the caller have a safe, vault,
padlock, bicycle lock, keyless car entry, gunsafe,
briefcase, firesafe, or a kids toy safe?

Does the caller want me to find another lock with the same
numbers? Find another lock with different combination? Find
the lost combination? Change the numbers? Change the
combination to match someting else?

I'm looking for a reply question that highlights how vague
that is, and a bit snotty. Ideally, I'd also like it to be
useful for the two or three customers who call each week and
want to know if I do car locks.

At the moment, I'm thinking of "Do you have some food to
eat?" or "do you have a leaf off a tree?" or "do you wear a
hat?" I guess those are objects.

Maybe better is "Do you interact with people?" "Do you
prepare food or drink?" "Do you do lawn work?" I havn't
found the really zippy reply, yet. Do you do zippy replies?

My favourite peeve with answering machines is people who won't leave a
message but simply say "Call me." I provide a machine so they can give me
something to work with so that my call to them isn't a waste of time for all
of us, especially if they have an answer machine and we both just call back
and forth doing nothing but leaving "call me" messages.