Oooops. Wrong number.

[cbenoi1]

Good deeds sometimes have side effects...

Meet the Louisiana grandmother Quebecers keep drunk dialing, hoping for a ride

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/louisiana-woman-late-night-calls-drunk-quebeckers-1.4463051

This went viral in a matter of hours with party-goers encouraged to give extra tipping for that "poor lady down South".

Pass the word.

-cb

 

[Xelebes]

My phone number back in the 90s was one easier digit away from the Yellow Taxi Cab company number. We would get drunks calling all night. It was fun.

 

[Cyia]

We got pizza orders.

 

[Maggie Maxwell]

My husband's number is (or was) one digit off from a Karaoke Cab in his hometown. We are not in that town. The one person who messed up the call was a wee bit too drunk to understand "No, that's not us. You have the wrong number." I'm amazed we haven't had more.

 

[MaeZe]

My business line (home office) is one digit off from Century Link's IT call-in to the "bridge". All the idiots have to do is hold the 6 in 866 xxx-xxxx down a second to long and they get me at all hours. They are in the middle of a repair call and the bridge gets them to some conference call or who-knows-what. They expect an operator, they mumble some crap, often with very heavy accents.

I tried telling them they dialed wrong. I tried asking them to let their coworkers know. Then I began asking them how an IT guy couldn't dial the phone. I tired complaining to Century Link. These guys were calling me in the middle of the night at least 3-4 times a week, sometimes more than once in a row because they would just hit 'redial'. I guess, "you dialed wrong" didn't compute with some of them.

Finally I started answering "Bridge" when they'd call, listen to the request and tell them "Please Hold". Then I'd wait for them to get tired of waiting and hang up. A couple of times they would hang up, redial and tell me off for being incompetent. Hehehe.

The last one worked, got their attention I guess. Now I only get an IT call once every couple of months. It's still always in the middle of the night.

 

[Kitkitdizzi]

There was this lady who would always forget to dial 1 first when calling her grandkids in San Jose and would get my parents' house instead. My mom is rather gregarious (to my introverted chagrin growing up) and eventually they started having hour-long conversations (usually about their kids-I think my mom loves embarrassing me). They're now very good friends.

 

[RedRajah]

Mix a number up and we shared a number with the dog catcher in the next town over.

 

[regdog]

We were one digit off a local private club/function hall. We had more calls to host private parties and wedding receptions than I could count.

 

[Twick]

Once a company in a neighbouring province put out an ad asking people interested in a certain job opening to fax them resumes. The number they gave was (say) 123-4567.

The trouble was, they didn't put in an area code, and their area code was not the main one for the region. My mother's number was (more common code) 123-4567. She spent about a week with her phone ringing constantly, only to get the "fax squeal" when she picked up. Because of course the people sending the faxes would resend them multiple times when they kept not going through.

I finally managed to google what the number stood for, and called the company to give them an earful. They couldn't pull the ad, but it never happened again so I assume they learned to always put in the area code in ads from then on.

 

[Brightdreamer]

Decades ago, my grandfather had a number one off from some place that did reservation events (I want to say it was some manner of golf club, but it was a long time ago.) My late uncle, ever the practical joker, would play along and take names and info. (I think he figured it was their own fault for not dialing carefully.)

Also, growing up, we were apparently close (numerically) to some kid named "Andy." My sister's nickname was that, which resulted in some confusion initially. They would misdial periodically over the years; you could hear the boy growing up. Kinda missed him when he stopped calling - either he left, or he and Andy were no longer friends.

 

[Roxxsmom]

My Mom has had a land line number that is one digit away from a local gerontogist's office for decades. She regularly gets calls from very feeble old people who are trying to reach their doctor. Some have trouble hearing or understanding when she explains that they've misdialed. It got really bad for a while, a number of years ago, when a new doctor joined the practice and misprinted his business cards with my parents' land line phone number

 

[JimmyB27]

I worked at the Open University in IT support for a while, and we had an empty desk with a phone on it that would ring every now and then with someone trying to reach the local laundrette.
In my current job, before we replaced all our desk phones with mobiles, my land line was one digit away from the hospital's maternity ward, so I used to get a lot of calls from expecting mothers trying to make appointments.

 

[Siri Kirpal]

Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Right after WWII, my mother worked at the Institute of Radio Biology and Biophysics connected with the University of Chicago. One day the phone rang and she picked it up and answered with the full name. The man on the line said, "Well I'll be damned!" and hung up.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

 

[cbenoi1]

Reminds me of the two guys in a bar.

"Is China far away?"

"I don't think so. I work with this Chineese guy who goes home every night."

-cb

 

[Roxxsmom]

When my brother was maybe six or so, the phone rang and he answered and spent a long time (fifteen minutes or so) chatting with a nice old* lady. When my mom asked him who was on the phone, he covered the mouthpiece and said, "Grandma!"

"My mother?" she asked, a bit peeved that her own mom hadn't asked to talk to her yet.

"No, my other grandma!" he said excitedly.

But our "other" grandma (our dad's mom) had died before we were born. My mom asked to talk to whoever it was, and it turned out the caller had misdialed, but she had a young grandson with the same first name as my brother. When he answered, she'd said, "His name? It's your grandma!" She thought she was talking to her own grandson, and he (evidently) forgot we only had one living grandma. Coincidentally, this woman's real grandson also had an older sister, but her name was different from mine. Which explained why my brother said, "You mean [my name]" a few times when she'd asked something his "sister" but used the "wrong" name.

Apologies and some amusement followed.

*To my chagrin, I realize I have been old enough to have six-year-old grandson for some years now, and I don't think of myself as "old," though a six-year-old probably does. How one's perspective changes with time.

 

[MaryMumsy]

In the same vein as Roxxsmom:

In college I worked switchboard at Sears. One evening when I got home from work Mom was laughing. At about the time I would have gotten off shift, the phone rang. A young girl's voice said "Mom?", and she said "yes, Mary?" and the reply was yes. The conversation continued for several minutes before they realized it was the wrong Mom and the wrong Mary.

MM

 

[CWatts]

Many years ago my office's toll free number was either a digit off or misprinted as the number for televangelist T.D. Jakes. We constantly got calls from people trying to order religious materials who didn't understand we were the wrong company. One of the books they kept requesting was titled A Woman, Her Lover and Her Lord which my co-workers and I thoight sounded like an old-school bodice ripper that should have Fabio on the cover.

 

[Brightdreamer]

In the same vein as Roxxsmom:

In college I worked switchboard at Sears. One evening when I got home from work Mom was laughing. At about the time I would have gotten off shift, the phone rang. A young girl's voice said "Mom?", and she said "yes, Mary?" and the reply was yes. The conversation continued for several minutes before they realized it was the wrong Mom and the wrong Mary.

MM

Reminds me of a story someone at work related. When her kid was younger, she got a call asking if they could have pizza for dinner. It took a bit to realize that it was not her own daughter calling. She gently suggested the girl hang up and try dialing again.

 

[Alessandra Kelley]

I once got a wrong number, in Chicago, from someone who promptly started speaking Japanese to me (I know just enough to recognize it, to understand very basic conversation, and to parrot a few phrases).

After untangling and mutual apologies I wished them a "Good Night" in Japanese, which they were amused and startled to hear.

 

[Snitchcat]

Reminds me of the two guys in a bar.

"Is China far away?"

"I don't think so. I work with this Chineese guy who goes home every night."

-cb

I can't decide if this is racist or not.

I see the humour, but I'm not laughing.