"Sorry, Wrong Number. Oh, Unless I'm Just A Big, Fat Liar"

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

RIIIIIING goes the phone.

I glance at the Caller ID, and see it’s only displaying a state name. One thing I’ve learned over the years – that’s a telemarketer. Answering machine can handle this one.

“Hello, you’ve reached the Briston residence. Leave a message and we’ll call you back”
<BEEEEEP>
“Mark Martin, you there? Hey, Mark Martin, I need to talk to you. Mark Martin, pick up the phone Mark Martin. Hey Mark Martin, c’mon, Mark Martin, it’s Frank. Pick up, Mark Martin, I’ve got a deer tick in my dog’s leg and I can’t get it out…”

Huh…that’s no telemarketer…it’s some guy babbling on about something that I sure as hell can’t make any sense out of (it wasn’t until I went back and listened to the message a few times that I got it all correctly). Doesn’t matter, there’s no Mark Martin Mark Martin Mark Martin here. I don’t want the guy being pissed at…what was his name again? Mark Something?..so I answer it.

“Hello?”
“Hey, Mark Martin! About time you answered…listen, I’ve got…”
“Woah, hold on a second – you’ve got a wrong number.”
“Huh? No, I’ve got a dog with a…”
“Nono, there’s no Mark here buddy, you’ve called a wrong number”.
“Well, I don’t think so. This sure sounds like Kelly’s”.
“Well, I don’t know what Kelly’s is, but this isn’t it. You’ve called my home.”

Let’s me just interject here for a moment – I know damn well what Kelly’s is – it’s a bar, and from the sound of this guy’s voice, it’s one he knows very well. Anyway…

“Well, you sure sound like Kelly’s to me. So, when you see Mark Martin, tell him…”
“No, I won’t be seeing Mark because you’ve called my home in New Jersey, and…”
“NEW JERSEY! Well, now I know you’re lying…I didn’t call New Jersey, I called Kelly’s!”
“Yeah, that’s kinda the point of me saying ‘wrong number’.”
“Listen, just tell Mark Martin that Frank called, and that I need…’”
“Yeahkbye.” <click>

Ok, I can fully appreciate the Drunken Dial call, although I question it being done at 9:45 in the morning. But how damn loaded do you have to be to convince yourself that you’re the undisputed and unquestionable master of all things phone dialing? I mean, when I’ve been really lit in the past, and I made a phone call, I still managed to keep it in my head that there was a better than even chance that I royally fucked up that phone number.

Huh. I just took a break from thread writing to check something out. I took the area code this guy called from, and ran that against a White Pages search for Kelly’s. I’ll be damned, here it is. Now this gets funny…my phone number and Kelly’s phone number are pretty similar, in parts. Trouble is, when you factor in that he had to dial my area code first, it seem that 'ol Frank would have had to have 1) mashed the keypad, thereby dialing my area code and the first two digits of my phone number, then 2) dialed Kelly’s phone number, while ignoring the fact that the phone was probably ringing while he dialed the last five digits.

Hmmm, now this thread was originally going to be along the lines of “Why the hell would you not believe someone who says you’ve called a wrong number: Discuss”. However, and new opportunity has come up:

Should I give Kelly’s a call and tell Mark Martin that Frank need him to come over and get the deer tick out of his dog’s leg?

2

Absolutely. If Mark Martin isn’t as popped as Frank, it could be hilarious. :smiley:

3

No. Mark Martin hates that damn dog anyway.

4

Too late now, but next time - “Mark, is that you Mark? The cops are here man… Frank? Who the hell is Frank? There’s no Frank here, just some cops looking for Mark Martin. You know where Frank is, Mark?”

5

Oh yes. That dog shouldn’t have to suffer just because his owner is a moroon. Then come back and entertain us with Mark’s response.

6

On a related note, I once received a weird call on my cell phone. Upon answering, I head an outraged voice exclaim, “What are you doing on my voicemail?!?!”

I was puzzled at first, so I asked, “What do you mean? This is my mobile phone.”

Still angry, he replied, “I was calling my voicemail. What are you doing on my voicemail?”

Exasperated, I said, “Sir, I’m pretty sure that you have the wrong number” and hung up.

Now, it seems to me that if we heard a strange voice respond when we tried to check our phone messages, most of us would immediately think, “Oops. I must have misdialed.” Apparently though, this gent was just supremely confident in his dialing abilities. No, he couldn’t possibly have dialed the wrong number, so I must have been some intruder who hacked into his personal voice mailbox. Sheesh.

7

Mark Martin wrote the words to the Arrogant Worms’ song Kill the Dog Nest Door:

:smiley:

8

Dave’s not here, man.

9

We had an old lady calling us for weeks convinced that this was the number to her daughter’s home. The old bitch was calling us from California, for Og’s sakes, so it must have been an enormous bill. I started out nice and got gradually angrier and angrier…maybe she had Alzheimer’s or something but she Just. Didn’t. Get. It. Literally she’d call and we’d tell her it was the wrong number, hang up, and immediately call back.
She was never mean and didn’t seem like she was doing it on purpose…but she did it day after day. After a while I started to wonder - where the fuck was this daughter? Why wasn’t she taking care of her mom? If her mom was really in this bad shape, then she shouldn’t have been checking on her mom daily? And if her mom was doing this maliciously, same thing - who’s paying the phone bill from Cali to NY?
I kept telling my SO to report the whole situation to Verizon…it’s his name on the account…but he was reluctant to get this old lady in trouble I think. I have no idea if she really would have been or what, but he’s sometimes a little too nice.

10

That was when you should have said, “Deleting your messages.”

11

When I worked in dialysis, I got to work first, at 4:30 AM, to start the machines and get the days special doctor’s orders off the answering machine.

One morning, a rather drunken voice told me there was a bomb set to go off at noon in the building.

My gut told me there was no bomb, and the guy was just pissed because he lost his quarter dialing wrong.

But… I spent the day “entertaining” the entire fire department, half the police department and most of the hospital administration. :rolleyes:
There was no bomb.

12

I in ur voicemail, changing ur message

13

The stupid beyatch who was assigned my home number before me apparently left without telling anyone in her address book that she had moved. I’ve had this number for almost eight months and I still get calls for her, a lot of them:

Beep!

“Ms. Foster, this is Smithtown Academy. We noted that your son Max was not in school today and we need to discuss this with you. Please call . . . .”

Beep!

"Ms. Foster, this is Dr. Bumblefutz’s office calling to remind you that you have an appointment to have your teeth cleaned tomorrow at 9 a.m. . . . "

Beep!

“Jenny! Hey! It’s Cindy! From Boulder! I knew we haven’t talked in ages but I was just wondering how you were! Give me a call at . . . .”

Beep!

“Jennifer Foster, this is a courtesy call from Vanity Fair magazine! Just a friendly reminder that your subscription is about to run out! You can continue to receive the timely articles and entertaining value of VF for only $12 per year by simply calling . . . .”

GAH!

The worst was this:

ME: Hello?
CALLER: Hi, Jenny?
ME: No, I’m sorry, there’s no Jenny here.
CALLER: But this is Jenny’s phone number.
ME: I guess it used to be, but now it’s been re-assigned to me.
CALLER: Well, do you have Jenny’s new number?
ME: . . . [If I’d been thinking, I would have said, “867-5309”]
CALLER: hel-LO???
ME: CLICK.

I swear, if I could find the woman I would smack her.

14

This made me laugh much harder than is healthy for a person.

15

Why don’t you call her? I mean, you have her number. :wink:

Quite a few years ago, when I tried to dial my voicemail, 1 out of maybe 50 times I’d get connected to somebody on the other end! After it happened a few times, I’d try and get the person on the other end (always somebody different) to chat with me for a bit, to try and figure out what the heck was happening. Turns out, on whatever the system was, if two people called at the exact same time, instead of connecting them to their respective mailboxes, it’d connect them to each other!

16

Normally I am a decent law abiding (boring :eek: ) citizen.
But I hereby give you permission to yank this fool’s chain.

17

You cannot let this go to waste. You must use the inevitable future opportunity to (a) use this in reply, and (b) add this to the other thread on situational jokes you’ve always wanted to use. :smiley:

Or you could say something similar to what Danny DeVito’s character “Sam Stone” says when he gets a wrong number call: Debbie? Yeah, Debbie’s here, who’s this? Well, Ralph, uh, Debbie can’t talk right now, my dick’s in her mouth. How about if I have her call you back later when I’m done? (hangs up) I love wrong numbers!

18

Once, I had trouble believing I had a wrong number.

My sister Kat had just gotten disconnected. I went to “received calls,” picked the last one from the list, and hit “dial.”

Me: “Hey Kat, I’m back. What-”

Voice: “You have the wrong number.” This voice sounded kind of like her best friend Liz. Liz was on the other coast at the time, working on her Master’s degree, but I wasn’t entirely sure of this.

Me: “C’mon, I just hit redial in the phonebook. You don’t think I’d fall for that?”

Voice: “No, I don’t know any Kat, and I don’t know you, you have the wrong number?” I realize the voice sounds like a sixteen-year-old valley girl. Liz, when she was 16, had been living alone for a year and sounded like she was 30.

Me: “Are you sure?”

Voice: “Yes.”

Me: “Sorry.”

I hung up, hit redial, and connected to my sister. The phone bill says both calls were to her.

19

Not the same situation, but still a phone-related mishap. We got a random collect call from this guy in prison, and because my family is a clan of idiots, we accepted it.

So, it was a pretty typical if not random “help me post bail” whiny plea for cash. We respectfully declined and hung up, thinking it was all over.

Not so fast, doper-breath. The REAL ploy of this call was to gain enough time to futz around with some archaic analog phone commands, and thus gain through some mysterious magic the ability to use OUR number to call his family in Brazil. We learned this because we saw our phone bill…

In the end, we had to call a cop to call the phone company and deal with the whole mess. Apparently this is a very common scam. It was extremely annoying when it happened, but it’s funny now.

20

That’s WONDERFUL. That may be the best bug ever.