Monday, July 10, 2006

Wrong number

Karl's brother recently ended a loooooooong blogging drought with a funny post about a debt collection company who kept calling his apartment looking for someone who he did not know and did not live there. Andrew also mentioned that his current phone number is the ex-phone number of some bankruptcy business of some sort, and that they get a lot of calls for them, which is annoying.

I can sympathize, as I get an inordinate number of calls on my cell phone for Radio Shack. I finally figured out that there must be some Radio Shack located right on the edge of the 919 calling area. People who live in 919 don't realize that they need to dial another area code to call their local Radio Shack. Now that I know whats going on, I usually tell people what to do (otherwise they keep calling me back). It is irritating though. Also, I get way more calls for Radio Shack on my cell than I do for me. I am THAT popular, people.

Brian has a similar affliction at work. Somewhere on the Duke website (although, lo! This seems to have been fixed! I just searched for it and its not there anymore), the phone number of the Athletic Office is incorrectly listed (I think it is very close to his actual number, but not quite), and people find it by searching the website. Brian used to get phone calls from reporters, from football players trying to reach their coach, from people hoping to get hooked up with tickets, etc. Often, when he would inform them that the number they had called was in fact a lab in the medical school, they would ask to be transferred. Which, of course he can't do.

I'm sure this sort of thing happens to a lot of people. Comments!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

We have an ancient phone in our office with no ability to transfer calls, and we get all these wrong numbers for other Vandy places. There is no consistency to them, though. They seem mad that I can't transfer them, although even if we had a fancy phone I still wouldn't know the proper number to transfer them to.

Melissa Greenfield said...

My wrong numbers are always from people who speak a different language. That's all I got.

Anonymous said...

The electric company keeps thinking I am the last person who had my number, who apparently is quite delinquent and is about to have their power cut off. I wonder if they know that! I did have this lady call me once asking for someone else and then get totally ticked that I didn't know their new number. Super fun with Verizon

Anonymous said...

If Brian gets another call about tickets tell him to take the persons name and inform them that the tickets will be waiting at the gate. Then they will stop calling.

Andrew said...

Apparently, my blogging drought was also a blog-reading drought, because I missed this post of yours completely. (I've actually been far too addicted to reading Overheard in New York and its siblings Overheard at the Beach and Overheard in the Office to give my friends' blogs their due. I'll get help.)

I do need to tell you that your site design looks lovely. Like an Easter egg, really. I usually read blogs via an RSS reader, so I miss out on the aesthetic touches.

This comment has made me realize my life is out of control.