Turning a nuisance into a money-maker
I want to open a business: a spy agency. Detectives, if you prefer.
Learn your competitor’s business secrets! Find out if your spouse is cheating! Think there’s a conspiracy? We can find out!
Here’s how it will work. My agents will (discretely, of course) follow around the target individual(s) in public areas, such as restaurants, airplanes, and stores. They will (discretely) eavesdrop when the target individual is talking on the phone.
It’s just that easy. People talk way too loud, and we all know how often we’ve heard people say things in public that we weren’t meant to hear. If my agents listened persistently, think how much they could learn.
Espionage. Perfectly legal.
Easy money. Because people with phones make it just that easy.
— Sue Burke
Learn your competitor’s business secrets! Find out if your spouse is cheating! Think there’s a conspiracy? We can find out!
Here’s how it will work. My agents will (discretely, of course) follow around the target individual(s) in public areas, such as restaurants, airplanes, and stores. They will (discretely) eavesdrop when the target individual is talking on the phone.
It’s just that easy. People talk way too loud, and we all know how often we’ve heard people say things in public that we weren’t meant to hear. If my agents listened persistently, think how much they could learn.
Espionage. Perfectly legal.
Easy money. Because people with phones make it just that easy.
— Sue Burke
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Yes, this has fictional possibilities. I provide the prompt at my local writer's group, and next Tuesday the prompt will be, "Write about an overheard telephone conversation in a public place, one shouldn't have been overheard."As for being discreet, you raise an excellent point. My agents won't have to try very hard at all to go unnoticed. But should they rescue targets who are about to get themselves killed? ... That fictional story has just encountered a plot twist.
But why are your employees, or more likely your sub-contracgors, going around discreetly? I suppose if they were all together in a clump it would be less clandestine than you'd like, but people on their phones don't notice manholes, traffic lights, other pedestrians, fires…so there'd probably be no problem.