A few years ago there was a message mistakenly left in my inbox for “Chuck” from someone who was obviously a prostitute. Since there was no actual Chuck there I could only assume it was a pseudonym and, like any dutiful co-worker, I forwarded it to the entire office to maximize its chances of reaching the intended recipient.
I looked at the results, and am mildly surprised at some of the posters/responses.
I had a phone number that was one digit off of a doctor’s office number. I did return a few messages on my answering machine left for him.
My answer is “it depends.” I usually let any number I don’t recognize go to VM. Spam calls, obviously not returned. If it seems like a misdial where I can be helpful–“Hi Jane, I got really sick and I’m wondering if we can reschedule”–I’ll text. Once in a while I’ll actually call, especially if it seems like the call came from a landline–for example I got a message once from a medical supply company about a mix-up in someone’s insulin delivery; it seemed like the right thing to call and explain.
I returned a phone call after someone left a voicemail on my office phone, thinking this that they were calling a doctor’s office to give 24 hour notice that they would be missing their kid’s appointment. From what they said their kid had a disability and my workplace has the word disability in the name so it was completely understandable that they thought they’d reached the right number. I didn’t want them to end up paying a copay so I called them back and talked to him to let him know that he still needed to call the doctor.
I can’t think of a time I have, so I answered “no.” My voicemail clearly states who I am. I also can’t think of a time I’ve gotten a voicemail to somebody not here that wasn’t some junk or collections call. If I received a call where I got far enough to the voicemail to hear that it was of some importance–like somebody dying–sure, I’d call back, but I’ve never gotten a call like that or at least not far enough into a voicemail to tell.
If it was something critically important, then I probably would call back. Other than that, no.
I tend to get misdirected texts nowadays more than anything else. I text them back and tell them it’s a wrong number. Two recent ones I can recall were a confirmation of some therapy appointment from a Boston area code, and another one was a pages-long text containing tons of personal information and a dissection of somebody’s marital issues. It was quite awkward. Judging from the weirdness and verbal diarrhea in that text, which should have been an email (if a normal person would have even sent such a thing), my guess was that the person who gave this texter their phone number gave a fake one to put them off, that happened to be mine. When I texted back to say it was a wrong number, the person then proceeded to call me 4 times in 10 minutes, which I ignored.
Years ago I received a message at work, addressed to a woman, asking the woman to call “the clinic” back as soon as possible. I rang the number and told the caller that they had presumably misdialled the number they wanted. She checked and discovered that she had made some simple error. She thanked me profusely for ringing back because she was calling from a fertility clinic and had an unexpected appointment vacancy for a woman who otherwise would have had to wait months.
I routinely get emails intended for other people and notify the sender that they have missed their target. For years I received emails about the Vietnam veterans group a namesake belonged to. Telling them that my email address, no matter how much it looked like it could be his, wasn’t his, didn’t work. So I found him online and sent them his real email address and that did the trick.