Operator, Won’t you help me place this call? See, the number on the matchbook is old and faded …
When I lived in Toronto, my number was one digit away from the Toronto Transit Commission’s lost and found department. I’d get home from work and find all kinds of messages on my answering machine, regarding lost items on the transit system.
I eventually modified my outgoing message to, “If you have lost an item on the TTC, call [real number]. But if you’re trying to reach Spoons, leave a message.”
Cell phone numbers are more versatile but in this case it was an old land line to a new land line with a different provider in a different area code. Same last four digits was the best they could do. My cell phone number has never changed.
I am convinced (based on nothing more than my imagination) that the U.S. President has a “555” phone number, to ensure that nobody accidentally calls him by mistake.
My dad’s business line was one digit different than a pharmacy, a 2 vs. a 3; easy enough to misdial. Most people would sheepishly say, “Sorry” & hang up & try again…except for one little old lady who insisted that she dialed correctly & he answered wrong!
My old work # was one digit different than a police precinct, a 3 vs. an 8. Some woman called asking about her son who was arrested & wanted to know about bail; how much or when he’d be out (I forget the details); however, I do remember after three times of telling her she had the wrong # when she again asked about bail, I told her they usually don’t issue bail for murder suspects before politely ending the call.
Last year, around the holidays I got a VM, from a social worker, letting me know my brother had passed. I was shocked! Devastated! I didn’t have a brother & now you’re telling me he’s dead?!?!? Given the nature of her call to what was to an obviously wrong # I called her back to let her know she left her VM to the wrong person & she’d need to try again. At that point she tried telling me details, like his first name & age thinking that would jog my memory.
From the location, it was in the 'hood & I can’t help but think the way she was talking that it wasn’t all that uncommon for people to deny a relative. Anyone able to shed any light on that one; do people in the hood forget their siblings?
A friend of mine had had a number one digit different from a popular restaurant. Most people happily complied when he told them they’d dialed the wrong number ( and provided the correct one).
But one guy insisted he’d dialed the right number.
My friend asked him, “Suppose you’re correct. What kind of service do you think you’re going to get from an employee as uncooperative as me? Just hang up, dial again, and hope someone better answers”.
My parents had a number very similar to the number of a lawn mower mechanic in one if the poorer neighborhoods. IIRC, their number had an 8 where his had a zero. But he had a cross in the zero. They got quite a few wrong and insistent that they were right callers, and an appeal to the business owner didn’t work. Finally, when someone called and ask for Earl, he said “Sure, I’ll be right over!” The person on the other end said “You ain’t Earl” and hung up
A long, long time ago, my work telephone was a direct line. Same area code, same exchange as a local hospital. The last 4 digits of my number was the same as one of the labs at the hospital. To talk to the lab, you had to call the main hospital exchange and ask for that extension. As you can imagine, people don’t follow directions and thought the lab was a direct line. Several times a week, I would get calls for the lab. I would calmly tell them that they needed to call the main line, and most people were nice and understood. Except once…
“Insurance Company, Winston speaking. How can I help you?”
“WHERE THE HELL ARE MY TEST RESULTS?”
“Ma’am, this is Insurance Company, not”
“DON’T GIVE NE ANY EXCUSES. I NEED MY TEST RESULTS”
“Ma’am, this is not City Hosp”
“I’M TIRED OF WAITING GIVE ME MY F—ING TEST RESULTS!”
“Fine. I’ll get them to you right away.”(click)
Please notice in that exchange that the other party never gave me their name. Even if I were from the lab, how would I know whose test results to rush?
I work for a law firm. Once, I got a call to my office phone from a guy demanding to know why the firm hadn’t called him back.
I was dumbfounded; the guy had called my direct line, but I had never heard of him. I spent several minutes trying to locate his name in our various directories while he lambasted “the firm” for not knowing who he was.
Finally, I confirmed the phone number. He had misdialed the area code. So it was just a coincidence that he had called a law firm. The one he was looking for was in a completely different state.
I had a company paid phone when I was working but I knew they weren’t going to let me keep it when I retired. About six months before I was done my wife had to renew her contract. We made a deal for two phones, one for her and on for me.
The phone number previously belonged to an elderly African American lady named LaVerne. I started getting her calls almost immediately. Many were just her friends that did not know that her number had changed. The ladies were nice enough but many of them used the wrong number for constant attempts to recruit me into the Jehovah Witnesses. Eventually I had enough calls that her friends evidently found her new number.
The bad part was that LaVerne was a customer of United Health Care. It took me a couple of years to finally kill the robocalls.
When my daughter was 4 or 5, I saw her talking on the phone (which hadn’t rung). I asked her for it, and there was a woman on the other end. We discovered that my daughter liked to try to call our home phone number, but would add an extra repeating digit in the middle. So she would call this woman at that number and chat with her - several times. The woman said that she was amused to chat with my daughter whenever she’d call.
A hundred years ago, Mr VOW and I had moved from Wisconsin to SCal. We hada phone installed and we were learning our new number. One night, the phone went crazy. The calls were all wrong numbers; as soon as Mr VOW would hang up the phone, it would immediately ring. He finally started asking people, “What number are you trying to call.”
The numbers were all variations of our number.
Some calls were hilarious. A very angrywoman insisted, “Look, I know my husband is at your bar, and you’re just making this wrong number stuff up to protect him!”
A man stated that he was making a very important long distance call. Mr VOW explained the problems we’d been having with the phone all night. Finally, Mr VOW said, “Maybe you should make your call through the operator.”
I transferred my old landline number to Magic Jack, it’s about $4 a month, paid annually. I don’t even have it hooked up since nobody uses it and if anyone calls I get an email with any voice message they leave.
My sister did exactly that when the local telco was calling themselves centurylink(the name has since changed a couple of times)
When she moved to Maine for a few years, she deactivated the landline but kept the number reserved(sentimental reasons) and then ported it over to verizon for her cellphone when she moved back. Before moving to Maine she called the telco there and got her (last four digits) number reserved so that she didn’t have to memorize an entirely new phone number.
