Telemarketer Drone: I’ll just take a moment of your time–
Me: No, you won’t.
CLICK
Perhaps he was disconnected for non-payment and you got his old number. When I worked collections for a phone company, we’d get irate customers calling us all the time because we refused to release their phone number to another company while we were still owed money. Sometimes people who’d had the same phone number for decades.
In my office I handle the overflow calls from the general information line. Not really my job and not really my speciality so woe to the person who gets me… but I have recieved several wonderful phone calls. I should mention that I work for an arts organization, not a studio or a production company.
I once had a young girl ask me to connect her to Hillary Duff or her assistants. I explained that Hillary Duff has no affiliation with our company and although I enjoy “Lizzie Maguire” I have no means to contact her. About ten minutes later she called back asking for Lindsay Lohan, “… although I did enjoy her in the remake of the Parent Trap…etc etc.”
A gil once called and asked: How do I get an agent? Cause I am an amazing singer.
Me: Well, first you will need to cut a demo.
I proceeded to give her general “makin’ it” information.
Girl: Can I sing for you?
Me: Sure.
She then sings “amazing grace”. It was decent.
Girl: So can I have a contract?
Me: I have nothing to do with that. You’d have to call a record label. Remember what I said about a demo?
Girl: There’s 4 of us we’re in a group.
Me: Okay. Still…
Girl: We’re thirtee- We’re seventeen.
Me: Great. I wish you luck. Keep the dream alive.
Then I hung up.
A few months later I had almost the exact same conversation with an older girl but she sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and thought I was an exec at Radio Disney.
I once had a guy call and threaten my job if I didn’t connect him to the president. He kept calling me sweetheart. It was surreal.
Had a string of voice mails over a 2 month period that were creepy and sad at the same time. About 3 or 4 times a week I would get home from work and check the answering machine, only to hear an obviously drunk and/or high woman telling “Susan” that she and the kids were waiting at the grocery store parking lot and to come pick them up.
Problem was, she would ramble on and on, using up the avaiable space on my machine several times a week, causing me to miss messages from people I cared about because they couldn’t leave a message. Sometimes she was basically incoherent, other times she would yell into the phone and get really mad that “Susan” was not answering.
Then it started to become every day. Same story every time.
Finally I called the phone company and asked if they could do anything about it. I was fed up. The very nice PacBell lady said that I could block a number, for a fee, but suggested I try and catch this person live on the phone and explain to her that it was a wrong number before I did that. Being the tightwad I am, I thought this a novel approach, as by now the calls were surely getting to be so frequent that a weekend or evening call would happen when I was home.
Lo and behold, the phone rang not 30 minutes this Saurday after I had finished my conversation with nice PacBell lady. My hackles rose, as once again I had to steel myself ot listen to the sloppy meanderings of a two-bit drunk loser who can’t seem to grasp the concept that when you heart a man’s vooice on the recording, and he actually says “madcossack isn’t here right now”, “Susan” will probably not be there.
So, I wait for the machine to start, then her. She does. Same routine as always. I give her a running, drunken start, then pick up the phone and just lay into her. I think I used more profanity in that 30 seconds of explaining that she was too stupid to live than I ever have in my entire life. And I’ve worked with the Navy, almost everyone in my family has been in the service, and my brother works in law enforcement and has taught me a thing or 2.
Half a minute later, when I came up for breath, she asked:
“So, when will Susan be over to pick me up?”
I told her calmly that if she ever called here again I would have her arrested for harrassing me and have her kids taken away. She hung up.
Never heard from her again. Hope the kids got picked up somewhere. Best part: I didn’t have to spend any money!
Another one:
Got a messgae on my machine that was basically a 5 minute long rambling crying fest that I had t listen to 3 times to figure out that Dwayne wanted his boyfriend to come back because he loved hime so much. Sort of sad, but my friends all got a kick oout of it because I saved it for a few weeks and played it for them.
One more:
My best friend was over one evening, and we got a wrong number call, asking for Tony. Thought nothing of it. 15 seconds later, phone rings again, friend sees the ID, realizes it is the same yahoo. He picks it up, and they ask for Tony again. He says, in a very sad and down voice:
“I’m sorry, but Tony passed away yesterday. Is this one of his friends?”
I was shocked by this, but the teenagers on the phone were slowed for approximately .002 seconds, as they all started laughing uproariously once they figured out their mistake.
Lesson: never discount the poor taste of a teenager!
Decades ago, I was trying to call my grandmother whos number was 123-456-7890 (example) and I kept getting the wrong number, but with verifying thenumber to the woman, I was actually reaching 987-654-3210 ( a number completely different than what i was dialing) After several tries, and an exceedingly irate woman answering, I had the operator place the call, the operator had the same problem, and the woman answering lit into the operator very rudely , when the operator was finally able to get the woman to stop screaming, she explained to her that the lines were crossed and probably would not be able to receive calls to the correct number until they fixed the problem. I still remember how nasty the woman was to me when it was obvious I wasn’t dialing a number anywhere close to her number.
Not a phone call I received, but one recorded on the answering machine of a friend’s work, and later emailed around to people. He worked at a local ISP
A woman calls, nearly out of breath with anger.
At one point I had a conversation with a man named Bob who had a phone number very similar to my friend of the same name. It was a very odd conversation until we figured out the problem.
Heh, just a teeny hijack. My husband is my do not call list. When a telemarketer calls he actually talks to them. For a long time." How’s the weather there? Do you you this product? Is it any good? " On and on. It really screws with their quota. For some reason they don’t call back. 
I got one today.
:: copies in from his blog ::
I don’t know what gets me more: the arrogance, or the rudeness.
They didn’t call back.
I was on the phone one day literally in tears trying to straighten out a COBRA/health insurance problem with my old insurance carrier and COBRA.
Inbetween calls while I was gathering info, the phone rings.
me: Hello?
dude: Who is this?
me: This is JJ. Who is this?
dude: is your dad there?
me: yes but i’m on the phone at the moment, he’ll have to call you back.
dude: ok make sure you tell him that Art called.
me: ok. click
I go on with my COBRA stuff, and cry some more. It was really exhausting work 
I tell my dad that Art called, and he can either use my cell to call him back or wait till I’m done making calls, after 5. He says: “I don’t want to talk to Art.”
As we all knew…it was after 3. Art was already drunk.
Still making calls, a half hour later…
ring
me: Hello?
dude: Who is this?
me: JJ. Who is THIS?
dude: This is Art. Why didn’t you tell your dad to call me back?
me: I TOLD him to call you back. But I’m still on the phone.
dude: Don’t lie. Why didn’t you tell him I called?
me: Listen, I TOLD him…
dude: Let me talk to your dad!
me: click
I yelled at my dad about his asshole friends calling (he works with alot of stupid [strike]rednecks[/strike] … gentlemen who are obsessed with their cell phones) and how utterly rude they are to answer with “WHO’S THIS?” (it’s happened more than once) and how it drives me nuts when I tell him someone called and he doesn’t call them back, because they just call back and yell.
Since I was so upset about the COBRA business and this idiot yelling at me, and my dad himself was ALSO drunk (remember - it’s after 3!) my mom got on the horn and called this dude and yelled at him on my behalf. What a good mom
Caller: Hello, could I speak to Mike, please?
Me: Nobody by that name lives here, sorry.
Caller: I know, Mike’s my husband. He’s visiting your husband this weekend. Could I speak to him?
Me: Er, I think you’re mistaken. We’ve not had any visitors this weekend.
Caller: No, you’re wrong. My husband is visiting [my then-husband’s name, first and last], until Tuesday. He told me so. He’s staying there. They’re old Army buddies.
Me: No, he isn’t. Wait, I’ll put my husband on the phone.
Then-husband: Ma’am? I don’t know anyone named Mike who would come to visit me. I’ve never been in the Army, and nobody is visiting me this weekend.
Caller: Yes, he is. He told me so. He drove eight hours on Friday to come see you. Please, please put him on the phone.
Then-husband: I’m sorry, but I’ve never heard of him. You must have the wrong name and number.
She called back three or four times, more distraught each time. I always wondered if some guy just picked a name out of a phone book and made up a story to get away from his wife for a weekend…
I was trying to get a job a few years back and was working with a recruiter-sort-of-person. He’d call up, and when the phone was answered he’d bark “Sengkelat!”
This was mildly annoying when I answered the phone, but my housemates really hated it when they’d pick up. I suggested to the recruiter that he start with “Hello, may I speak to Sengkelat” but subsequent phone calls showed that that didn’t get through to him.
Then I tried telling him that as a person who makes his living on the phone, he should learn some phone etiquette. That didn’t work either.
Finally I told him that I’d instructed my housemates to simply hang up on him if he behaved offensively. He then called and told me that he wasn’t going to work with me anymore because I “wasn’t serious about finding a job.”
Great thread!
Once I got a string of threatening, abusive and altogether terrifying messages on my machine. I was rather freaked out, but not convinced they were directed at me since it wasn’t clear who they were intended for.
As it turns out my roommate at the time, a lawyer, was at the bottom of it. She had a client who was getting threatening, abusive and terrifying messages from some man, and the client forwarded them to her phone, and roommate had then forwarded them on to ours in order to make sure they were well and truly saved for the purposes of the upcoming court case.
She had recorded a brief introduction - “Hi, cowgirl, I’m about to forward some abusive and terrifying messages to our phone so I can save them for a court case, don’t be alarmed” - but it didn’t work. I just got the threats.
It was a great relief that they weren’t directed at me, but an upsetting view into the life of a stranger.
I played a dirty trick on some kid who crank-called me about 11:30 one night a few months ago. 
Phone rings. I’m startled out of my dozing off, I look at the caller ID, and it reveals a first and last name, with phone number - local number.
Silver: “Hello?”
Kid: Loud burp.
Silver1 wrinkles her brow, wondering what the hell is going on. All the Silver1juniors are asleep and I don’t want the baby awakened by the phone.
Kid snorting laughter: “Did you like that?”
Silver1: “Who is this and why are you calling so late?”
Kid: “If you liked that, listen to this!” Loud farting noise. Don’t know if it was real or not. I’m banking that it was genuine; kid must have ingested a can of refried beans and a pint of Dr. Pepper to generate that sort of noise.
Kid laughs crazily, and I hear other kids laughing in the background.
I got a fabulous idea and decided to bluff big time.
Name on the caller ID was Doe, John. (naturally)
Silver1: “Mr. Doe, young man, don’t think I won’t speak to your mother about this! You won’t be playing with Silver1junior (I spoke my eldest son’s name) when your parents ground you!”
Kid: I could swear I heard a muffled “oh, shit”. Click.
What, the kid never heard of caller ID?
Total bluff on my part. I don’t know anyone by the name of the person whose number appeared on my caller ID. I decided to play like I recognized him and was going to tell his mother, like I was the mom of one of the kid’s schoolmates or something. Well, it worked!
I get calls on my cell for the guy who last had the number. Usually, they ask for Keith, I explain that the number was re-assigned by AT&T Wireless last spring, and that’s that.
One dingbat couldn’t get it into her head that I am not Keith, I do not know Keith, and I certainly don’t have Keith’s new cell number. This dingbat took five minutes of my cell time before it finally dawned on her that I was serious. (I don’t even know Keith’s last name, so I can’t just call Information for an alternate number, which I’ve done in the past.)
I want those five minutes back.
Robin
Do wrong SMS things count?
In 2002, on Christmas Eve, of all times, I started getting long-winded text messages from a woman in Brisbane who thought mine was the number of a boyfriend’s (I think possibly ex) mobile. I kept them for a while as my friends found them amusing, although at the same time it was a little sad. I remember them pretty well and have tried to keep some of the strange wordings of things intact.
**Message 1: Hi over there! I have all news for you.
Me: Not recognising number Ok. Who is this?
Her: Stop all Jerk!** (sic). **I am trying to TALK to you. You have to be listening to me!
Me: I don’t know your number. I don’t know who you are. Are you sure you have the right number? **(Or something along those lines)
**Her: No! I know it’s you male name! This is more now. You know, important, like at home, like all the other times you never LISTEN! I am pregnant now and you know it’s yours! What are you going to do??? I need help!!!
Me: You have the wrong number. I am female and I don’t know you. This seems private, I think you ought to find malename’s real number.
Her: YOU ARE TRYING TO RUN NOW HEY!!! **
(I didn’t respond to these, she sent them all very fast.)
**Her: HEY! I HATE YOU NOW. I THINK MAYBE I HATE YOU ANYWAY SECRET FOREVER!
Her: I AM GOING TO CALL YOUR BRO AND femalename AND YOUR MUM AND DAD AND TELL THEM HOW IT’S YOUR BABY AND MY BABY AND YOU’RE LEAVING ME WITHOUT YOU NOW!
Her: string of insults and threats that would probably have caused my genitals to fall off and wriggle away to safely had I actually been the guy she was after
Me: Please stop messaging me. You have the wrong number. Really. I am not malename.**
I turned my phone off then, partly because I was having a christmas bbq with my family and partly because, you know, wouldn’t you?
Anyway, several people were supposed to call me that evening so I turned it back on a few hours later. To find 5 or 6 messages detailing exactly why I was jerk, what I might do to make her love me again, why my brother was such a good man and why I was a jerk. Some more.
I messaged again not to use this number, saved the message in the archive so I wouldn’t have to keep typing it and sent it as the stock reply every 3 messages or so for a few days, not responding to the messages in between. Every now and again I sent a very polite message detailing the situation and again asking her to stop and maybe go find the real number. Perhaps malename’s brother or parents know it.
She didn’t listen. It went on for the next week - I need my phone so I couldn’t just turn it off. There were usually 10-20 messages a day. I stopped replying. I tried calling her number a few times to try and convince her, but she hung up on the number shown from my mobile. I guess she just wanted to continue texting our her anger. I called from another phone, she listened for a few minutes, went into a tirade about how I was probably his sleazy-new-prostitute-slut-girlfriend (her words) and he was making me do this and I should make sure he doesn’t run away when he gets me pregnant too. She told me to tell him she was going on holiday to Bali for a week soon with othermalename and she needed money for the baby so he should send it to her. (You need money desperately so you’re going on holiday??) Then she hung up.
A week later I was considering paying the service to block the number when it finally ended with the most disgustingly insulting message ever to grace the air it flew through on it’s way to me.
The relief. My god the relief.
Many years ago, before call waiting and in the days when answering machines at homes were deemed “impersonal”, Mr. Kiminy and I moved into an apartment and got phone service to said apartment. Within a couple of weeks, we started getting frequent phone calls to a variety of people we had never heard of. During one of these phone calls, I actually got the full name of one of the people, and looked her up. Turned out that the current phone book had our phone number listed under her name. Short of paying for a new number, there really wasn’t anything we could do about it, but we did get a few interesting calls, including one from a pharmacy informing us that her check had bounced. Since this was months after we got the number, we could only assume that this woman had purposefully put the wrong phone number on the check.
The best one though:
Ring
Me: Hello?
Teen Age Girl: Can I talk to Emily?
Me: There is no Emily here. I think you have the wrong number.
TAG: Okay, sorry. hangs up
-30 seconds later-
Ring
Me: Hello?
TAG: Can I speak to Emily?
Me: You still have the wrong number. I’m sorry.
TAG: Is this 123-3445?
Me: Yes, it is, but there is no one named Emily here.
TAG: Okay, sorry. hangs up
-two minutes later-
Ring
Me: Hello?
TAG: Can I speak to Emily?
Me: Sorry. There is no one named Emily here.
TAG: Yes there is. You are lying to me.
Me: No, I promise you, there is no Emily here.
TAG: I just looked up this number in the phone book, and it says it’s the right number.
Me: There’s an error in the phone book. I suggest you call 411 to get the correct number. {Note: This was in the days when 411 was practically free, too.}
TAG: BUT THIS NUMBER IS IN THE PHONE BOOK!!! I want to speak to Emily.
Me: There is no Emily here.
TAG: Why won’t you let me talk to Emily? I know she’s there.
Me: hangs up
-30 seconds later-
Ring
At this point, I just let the phone ring. After a few minutes, I unplugged the phone, then plugged in back in a couple hours later.
Recently, we’ve gone through spats of getting messages on our answering machine asking for someone we’ve never heard of to call them back at a toll-free number. Since they never mention the name of anyone we know, much less anyone who lives here, I certainly don’t feel any obligation to call them back, especially since the answering machine message does include our phone number. After about ten such messages, though, you would think they would figure it out.
One company that did this to us recently had a person call our number every day around 2pm and ask (garbled name, but nothing close to anyone we know) to please call (another garbled named) back at 877-123-4567 about “an important business matter”. Since both Mr Kiminy and I work full-time, there is very rarely anyone home at 2pm. After a week or so, I guess they figured this out, and an automatic dialer started calling around 5pm. The first time this happened, I was happy, because I thought it would be a way to explain the problem without actually calling them myself, but it was just an automated recorded message. Finally, after about a month, a real person called when I happened to be home. I explained the problem, he seemed peeved, but they stopped calling us. (Yes, I realize I could have ended the torture sooner by calling back, but given that I really didn’t understand either the name of the person I was supposed to talk to there, or the name of the person they were trying to reach, I really didn’t want to waste my time. It was faster just to delete the messages as soon as they started playing.)