Ronn Blankenship wrote:
>
> At 01:29 PM 4/4/02, you wrote:
> >Here's a new one. I just took a call from Southwestern Bell, our
> >telephone company. It turned out to be a wrong number.
> >
> >(I looked up the name she'd asked for, and noted that the number listed
> >under that name could conceivably be mis-dialed as ours, but it would
> >take a bit more effort than the usual missing one number -- the last 4
> >digits of our phone number are ABAC and the caller had dialed BABC
> >instead.)
> >
> > Julia
>
> Dyslexia, perhaps?
>
> In addition to calls for other "Blankenships" with similar initials to my
> father and now myself, we used to get a lot of calls for a ceramics store
> in town called the "Pixie Pottery". IIRC, the three prefix digits were the
> same, but the rest of the two numbers were too dissimilar for the number of
> misdirected calls to be easily explained, so we wondered if the two
> circuits were somehow crossed at the phone company . . .
It was actually getting to where I almost missed wrong number calls.
We had a second number on the main phone line that was for my co-workers
to reach me, so Dan would know not to answer. (It was just a lot easier
all the way around for people to leave messages on the machine if
necessary than to have Dan deal with taking a message. Plus which, he
had the habit of picking up the phone before I could see who it was on
the Caller ID, and he'd have to find me to tell me it was for me.
Having the second ring on that line helped a lot.) It was one digit off
from the pharmacy of a grocery store, and that one digit was an "8" for
the pharmacy and "3" on my number. People misread their prescription
bottles when calling for refills now and again (which translated into 2
to 10 wrong-number calls per week, which I handled as graciously as I
could). Since we dropped that number, we've gotten a lot fewer wrong
numbers.
That number that was one off from the pharmacy wasn't the number I had
originally been issued; they made a typo in a phone book, and I started
getting calls for a mechanic that's about a mile from here, 5 to 10
times a day, and the best they could do was give me a new number
(couldn't exactly send out retractions to everyone who'd gotten that
phone book!).
Julia
