Yeah, my school too. The first 3 numbers were 268, which spelled “CMU.” (Carnegie Mellon) So naturally, tons of people thought it would be hysterical to call CMU-NERD and say “Is this the CMU Nerd?”
I think they finally stopped assigning that number. I did always feel awfully sorry for the guy at CMU-NERD, because being Carnegie Mellon and all, he probably was a nerd.
I think part of the explanation might be phone technology itself. It’s a very poor reproduction of human speech – a huge chunk of information is dropped out upon transmission. It takes the brain a moment to get in tune with what it’s hearing, especially if it’s an unfamiliar voice. So the brain just starts out slightly confused before it finds its bearings.
Today, at home, I answered the phone:
Me: “Hello?”
Voice: “Hello?”
Me: Hello?"
Voice: “Hello?”
Me: Hello?"
Voice responds with a stream of very angry asian sounding speech.
Me: “I’m sorry, I think you may have the wrong number.”
Click.
:dubious:
I generally don’t get wrong numbers these days – I used to get a lot of hang-ups before I put in my new ansamachine combo, which leads off with a TTY message which is lots of BEEP BEEP BAH GRAH WINNY BOOP BOOP BONG in your ear before the human readable message comes on. 
I do this. The number we have had at work for over a decade is one digit off of a local specialty store. So, when I answer the phone “Company Name That’s Nothing Like ‘A Store For Cooks’” and they ask , “Is this A Store for Cooks?” I can say “No, you’ve mis-dialed. Their last four digits are 0445, not 0045.”
Sometimes they thank me. Sometimes they don’t believe me- about the mis-dial and/or the other number. :smack:
Me: Hello.
**
Wrong Number Calling Person:** Hello, may I speak to Mamie?
Me: Who’s calling, plz?
WNCP: It’s Boris.
Me: Just a moment…(I muffle the phone and giggle fiendishly to myself, pause to light a cigarette and resume speaking): Uh, Boris?
WNCP: Mamie?
Me: Dude, I don’t know what’s goin’ on, but Mamie’s still real pissed off at you, and she doesn’t want to talk to you at all; in fact, she told me to tell you she’s gonna come over and kick your ass if you call here again. (hang up real fast)
Seeing as how I’m probably gonna go to Hell for the first time I did that, now I just do it every time I get a wrong number call!
Huh.
I’m always asking the question, “Is this <company name>?” after being told the company name.
I used to work a job where I had to call to check references, and so was constantly calling companies and individuals of all stripes, and I rarely had much information beyond the number and the name (usually) I was calling. The following would occur multiple times each hour I was on the job. I can only imagine how often it was repeated for the oh-so-efficient receptionists I dealt with.
Them: “Thankyouforcallingbetchayacan’ttellwhatI’msayincanyahowmayIhelp you?”
Me: “I’m sorry, say again?”
Them: “Huff. Thankyouforcallingbetchayacan’ttellwhatI’msayincanyahowmay I help you?”
Me: “Uh, is this Empire Apartments?”
Them: “What did I just say?”
:smack:
Apparently, I sound like my own answering machine. When I answer the phone, people often start to leave a message, not realizing that I am speaking to them live.
A few weeks ago I answered my office phone with “Boyfriends are us. May we take your order please?”
My friend on the other end, whom I have been chasing for a decade, laughed so hard that she sharted coughing. She was not aware that I had call display on that line.
Ahhh I remember the days of Crazy Crack Whore Lady. She had a strong Southern accent, sounded like she’d smoked cheap cigars for 50 years, and would call promptly at 8 PM on Fridays. For 8 weeks. After the third week I told her “look, this isn’t Dave’s number, we’ve had it for years(which was true), he’s NOT here!” Then I started saying “what did I tell you last week when you called?” Her response to that was “wuuut?” She finally either gave up, died, or finally got ahold of Dave.
I miss her sometimes.
Something I don’t understand, is when I get a wrong number calling me and they repeat back the number they dialed(“Is this 555-867-5309?”) They always repeat back MY number! I understand people can transpose numbers, or write it down wrong, but I’ve never had someone say ‘is this 649-1659’ and I say ‘no it’s 649-1569’
It helps the person determine whether it was a transcription error or a dialing error without bothering you with a second call in the event that it was a transcription error.
I understand how frustrating it is when you answer your phone with a company name and are then questioned about it…but come on, be a bit more sympathetic! Have you never called a business and had them answer with a rapid-fire “ThankyouforcallingLocalStorewherethedealsarehotandthepriceslow” and you have no idea what they just said? And sometimes there is that momentary lag between the connection and the voice starting and things get cut off. I call one business here in Cleveland that has a receptionist with a strong British accent which I am NEVER expecting to hear, so it takes my brain a moment to process this accent into something intelligible…same goes for the agency where the receptionist is from India! I always try to answer our company phone with extra clarity and precision, and that’s why I include the “Thank you for calling…” at the beginning…to give the ears a second to process what I’m saying, and how. Plus…I work in a noisy environment…sometimes when I answer the phone the background noise, which I don’t even notice, can overwhelm the listener. I first realized this when I called in to work while my boss was running a job, and I had no idea how noisy it can sound over the phone. So now I try to step away from the noise, or at least wait a beat before speaking, so they can process my voice over the background.
So while I understand the frustration, I can sympathize with people who honestly can’t hear what you said…heck, my elderly mother has tons of trouble now with calling places because they answer with such a fast, preplanned speech they have to say fifty times an hour, but she can’t sort out the words when they speak so fast. I’ve even stopped the people at Subway who are required to start every single encounter with a customer with the same prepacked phrase, to tell them to please repeat it, slower, because I can’t understand them. And yes, I can be a brat about it!
BigNik, I just want to say I would love the chance to do that do somebody same day, but damn did I get a laugh from your story.
You are my hero!
When we moved into our house (over 20 years ago), we of course got a new phone number. For about 6 months, a little old lady who sounded just like the LOL in those old LoonyTunes would call and ask for Mrs Foley. Each time she called, I sensed a new level of despair, that she had not yet reached Mrs Foley and was wondering why she could not. It about broke my heart, because I figured that Mrs F had to be dead. The only way to get an old prefix (like we had) was for someone to die off around here.
She stopped calling after a bit. I often wonder if she stopped because she died as well…
RE the wife/mistress, husband a deceased patient scenario–I’ve been involved in a few of those as a nurse. One man, 2 families, meet over his heart attack. Not pretty, but excellent drama!
My dad decided to be a wise guy and he changed his answering machine message to say something like:
“Hello?..Hello?..Hello is anyone there?..We can’t come to the phone right not but if you leave your name and number, we’ll get back to you.”
Of course during the pause after the first hello you’d start talking because you thought it was him. At least the first time.
One of my friends does this all the time. She also has her outgoing VM message in French from time to time. (She lives in Fresno.) She’s a laugh riot.
My personal favorite wrong number was when I had switched jobs on campus at Texas A&M. We got a mis-dial at my new job from someone attempting to call the office that, by random chance, I had worked at previously. I transferred the call for them, and my boss said “You didn’t have to do that.” “Eh, I already knew the number, it’d take more time to tell them I couldn’t do it than it did to just do it.”
I’ve had to get used to this at work - I don’t know if it’s the phone system or what, but if I answer my supervisor too fast, he doesn’t hear it. I’ve taken to slooooowly picking up the phone, and then saying hello.
For the rest of you - yeah, that’s me calling. I’m absolutely terrible at verbal comprehension, so I frequently can’t process the first words in a conversation. Like, if I’m paying attention waiting for the person to answer, my brain can’t handle decoding what they said when they picked up, too. Plus, I often just don’t trust what I think I hear, because I’m wrong a lot. So I often have horrible, mumbly phone conversations, and repeat questions a lot. Sorry 'bout that.
Am I an evil person for wanting to hear some stories?
Wrong numbers:
You people are a lot more patient/generous/[evil?] than I am. I don’t answer numbers I don’t recognize on the caller ID. The phone I use for voice communication (as opposed to the modem line) has been my cell phone for years and years and years; I had a land line when I still had dial up, but I never gave that number out to anyone I cared to talk to, so I pretty much knew any ringing on that phone was something I didn’t care about. And for my cell, I’m just not interested, in general, in wasting minutes of airtime when my outgoing voicemail message will tell them what they need to know and not cost me anything. I figure if it’s important they’ll leave me a message; and if it’s not important enough to leave a message, it’s not important enough for me to talk to them. On the rare occasion I pick up a call I don’t recognize, I’ll just hang up if they don’t respond to my “hello” within a reasonable amount of time; and if it’s a wrong number, I just say “Sorry, wrong number” and hang up, cuz if I don’t know Jody, there’s no further useful information I can give them, and I’m not inclined to waste time explaining how I really have no idea what Jody’s number is. Occasionally I used to get people who would immediately call back, and I’d let that go to voicemail. I found it really bizarre when I was out with a friend and she answered the same wrong number 5 or 6 times in a row. Hitting redial isn’t going to magically transmogrify it into the right number!
Anyway… I used to get calls from an area code in Georgia (I’ve never been to Georgia, nor do I know anyone there) in the wee hours of the morning. Not often, but consistently, for a couple years… maybe once every couple months. On the rare occasion she left a message, there was too much background noise for me to figure out what in hell she was saying, so I never did figure out what that was about.
There was a little old lady who used to call me all the time, too, and left me messages 1> asking to be picked up, 2> saying that the furniture delivery person wasn’t there yet, 3> asking for some relative to call her back. Apparently in her mind my number was magic and would put her through to whomever she happened to want to talk to at that particular moment. The fact that my outgoing voicemail message clearly states my business name, and the phone number, was apparently lost on her. I always wondered what numbers she was actually trying to dial, and how she ended up dialing mine instead. And why she never figured out that mine was the wrong number…
WTF? As long as you’re paying your bills, what business is it of theirs what you use the phone for? It doesn’t affect them at all, so why would it matter if it’s Uncle Joe or a client calling you?