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Miss Cleo and her not-so-psychic friends
------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------- By AMY NICHOLS Staff Writer
We’ve all seen her. Usually she’s either sitting in a room with candles arranged behind her or she’s in front of some ocean view. Somehow, I don’t think either is what her real work environment is like. If a person has stayed up long enough, they will have seen the quasi-infomercial done on her, with some reporter asking her why she thinks she’s so popular.
Her answer: “I keep it real.” She’s Miss Cleo, the Jamaican psychic who will give callers a free tarot reading over the phone. Free, that is, as long as it can be given within three minutes; any minute thereafter costs $4.99. Her commercials are so frequent now that she’s become almost a household name. Never having called a psychic before (or for that matter, never having been to any psychic at all), I thought I would take it upon myself to find out what kind of readings Miss Cleo gave.
When I called the 1-800 number from the commercial, I spoke to a guy named Mike. Although he was nice, the whole time I was talking to him I was thinking, “Let’s get on with it. I want to speak to Miss Cleo.” Mike asked me my name at the beginning of our conversation just so he could say, “Amy,” in every sentence he said. (“Now, Amy, I am here to answer any questions you might have and to give you the number where you can get your free tarot reading.”)
Needless to say, I was a little miffed that I had to call a whole other number. Even though I had decided that I would go ahead and waste part of my week’s paycheck on this call, my main concern throughout it was, “Exactly how much will I have to waste?” I had never seen how much it was a minute if a person would accidentally exceed those free first three minutes on the commercial, so of course that was the first tidbit of information I ascertained from Mike.
When I finally was able to call the 900 number Mike gave me and I dialed Miss Cleo’s extension, I was told that she was busy, but that I could call back or wait on the line to speak to one of her psychic partners. It reminded me of those radio contests when a person wins if she’s the ninth caller, but every time she calls, it’s busy, so she just keeps dialing. The only difference was that this time I wondered if there wasn’t some sort of surprise charge. Maybe they don’t bill people for the first three minutes, but each time they call, there’s a charge just to hear the recording that says Miss Cleo is busy. Listening to the same recording, my mind wandered and I began thinking, “what if today is Miss Cleo’s day off?” or, “maybe the whole thing was a scam, and doing commercials is Miss Cleo’s only job duty.” With deadline approaching, I decided I might as well just listen to her psychic partner.
When she came on, she sounded like an old lady who had smoked one too many Camels in her lifetime. The reading began not only with some sort of piano music but also with a large smoker’s cough, which wasted almost 30 seconds. She asked me to make two wishes, one for me and one for someone else, and then to meditate and concentrate on the three most important things in my life. It’s hard to try to meditate while watching the clock. The whole time I was meditating, she kept interrupting every ten seconds to tell me she was shuffling my cards. I don’t even know the correct way to shuffle cards, but I do know it doesn’t take an entire minute. Once the shuffling was finished, she said, “I can tell you are a good person and a happy-go- lucky person,” and more things to that effect. Now when I personally think of a tarot reading, I want to be told I’m going to find $1 million tomorrow or that a tree is going to fall on me; if I wanted to know what kind of person I am, I’ll call one of my friends... and won’t be billed for it. It wasn’t until after three minutes went by that she began to get to any remotely juicy parts, but she had drawn things out for so long that by this point I didn’t care. The way she spoke it was almost like she was singing my tarot reading: “Da-da-da da-da da-da-da. You do not go behind people’s back. You are not as close to your family as you once were.”
I finally had to interrupt my psychic friend, because she didn’t sound close to finishing.
It took a while to interrupt and when I did, she said, “But don’t you want to hear about your love life. You are...” That’s about the time I had to hang up on the old lady.
It obviously just wasn’t worth my hard-earned paycheck to listen to an old lady cackle.
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I am not psychic, I can predict that Miss Cleo has no future. All these psychic lines do not live very long. Remember Diann Carroll's Psychic Friends? Now we have the Missouri Attorney General pressing fraud charges on her.
Face it these things are a scam, I even seen in a newspaper wnat ad, NOW HIRING Phone Psychics, no experience necessary will train!
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