I wouldn’t think that bringing your own earpiece to a payphone would ever become a thing. But that would be the only way to make a two-way call using this beat-up payphone that, despite appearances, can actually connect a call.

I tried to concoct a real-world scenario or circumstance that would drive one to pick up this phone and call, for sake of argument, 911. Something like a violent crime in progress where someone decided to use this phone to dial 911 as an absolute last-ditch act of desperation.

But that sounds more like something from a work of dramatic fiction, where one person somehow knows this payphone can make calls. This person later gets involved in some kind of dispute, which escalates to a point where he feels he should call 911. As he makes this call the criminals at work heap ridicule on him for calling 911 from a payphone that obviously (to them) does not work. Unknown to those heaping the ridicule is that their victim’s call connected and 911 dispatched police to the scene.

I encountered another phone like this last year, at the Times Square subway station. Despite its lack of an earpiece my call to a voicemail box went through and I recorded sounds of nearby musicians. That phone, now abandoned, no longer allows outgoing calls. You never know, though. The Times Square phone is owned by PTS (Pacific Telemanagement Services), and their phones have been known to rise again after staying out of service for as much as a year.

If you need proof that this phone makes outgoing calls — and I don’t know why you would because why would I make this up? — this screengrab shows the caller ID of the incoming call I made from the payphone.

The number — 718-783-9532 — appears on the old payphone data museum, but at the wrong location. This phone is at Grand Army Plaza, not Flatbush Avenue. Unlike the Times Square station, where subway musicians and buskers regularly performed within audible distance of a payphone, the Grand Army Plaza station had nothing to record.