"J. van Baardwijk" wrote:
>
> At 23:30 5-4-02 -0600, Julia Thompson wrote:
>
> > > And after years of the above at home (after which the phone company redrew
> > > their districts and changed our number), I got my commission and became an
> > > engineer working on flight test in the Air Force. I had several phone
> > > lines that went through the secretary, and one which went directly to my
> > > desk: extension 3303. The appointment desk at the base hospital had
> > > extension 3033 . . .
> >
> >You win. :)
> >
> >Unless someone else wants to try to top that. I certainly can't.
>
> Maybe I can. How about getting a phone number that used to belonge to
> someone else?
>
> When I moved to Eindhoven and applied for a phone line, I was given a
> telephone number that used to be the phone number of a computer store (that
> computer store still exists, BTW). At first, I would be called at least
> three or four times per week by people who wanted prices quotes, have their
> computer repaired, etcetera. The number of calls gradually decreased over
> time, but it took almost two years before they stopped altogether.
>
> Usually when someone changes his phone number, the old number is not
> re-issued for one or two years. So either KPN Telecom screwed up bigtime,
> or those callers still had the old phone number somewhere on file (as the
> store was listed with the correct number in the phonebook).
>
> Anyone want to top *that*?
Is that any worse than the phone company mis-printing a phone number so
I got calls from people wanting an auto repair shop (3 times a day, at
minimum)?
I just think that Ronn's story tops everything I've heard so far, except
for maybe Dan's story about the body shop.
Oh, and our phone number *did* belong to someone else, but we didn't get
very many calls for him, and the people calling for him tended to be
really nice. Once I got his new number, I gave that out to the folks
calling for him, cheerfully, and they all thanked me very much. (We
didn't call back the guy who was calling long-distance from outside the
country and who left a message on our machine, though.)
Julia
