"Are you the supervisor of the guy who... well, we was parked... see... we parked our truck too close to the tracks and yur guy hit our truck with the train?"
That's the phone call I just got.
What's the funniest, saddest, strangest "Oops! Wrong number" story you've got? Maybe you received the call, maybe you made the call - Please share!
Wow! That's an amazing one steve. Timely post, btw. I just got done with a phone interview. I missed a call from a number I didn't recognize while talking with the hiring manager. I attempted to call the number I didn't recognize, but I accidentally redialed the Hiring Manager. HM: hello Me: Hi, I missed a call from this number. HM: Yeah, Steven we just spoke. Me: Oh, Um... sorry about that. HM: No problem Me: Well, since I have you on the phone, how have your last three minutes been? HM: Pretty good, thanks Me: Alight, well I'm glad we had this talk HM (laughs) me too. Then we both hung up. She shortly thereafter emailed me that I have made it to the next round of the process. Who knows, maybe that phone call helped?
What!? "yur guy hit our truck with the train"? Yeah buddy, good luck getting the train company to pay for that one! My funniest wrong number story: When I first moved to Norway some 7 years ago a lady called from Denmark trying to reach her son in Tromsø. I couldn't speak much Norwegian, but she just kept talking. I tried all the simple things I could say, I had just moved from the US, the weather was nice, I worked in mathematics, etc. Found out her name was Elsi. A couple of weeks later she called again. We laughed about the wrong number and chatted a little bit more. She seemed delighted just to talk. A few days later she rang again. "Hei! Det er Elsi!" she said. "Hvordan er været?!" (How's the weather?!) No pretense of a wrong number now! This dear old lady just wanted to talk. She became a phone friend for a while, calling me at random times and talking slowly so I could understand, but I really couldn't speak many words and I guess it was too demanding so after a while she stopped. Oh Elsi, where are you today? We could discuss so many things now!
Not long ago there was an askreddit post about people who had killed others and how it effected them (don't know if you saw that). On of the responses was from a train engineer. It was the one that really got me in the gut. It takes a mile to stop a train, so he had hit something like a dozen people in half as many years. Some of them seemed to be suicides, but a lot were people stuck on the tracks. He said they would look up at him, but there was nothing he could do. So eventually, he stopped looking back and would just look at the floor during the collision.
I didn't see that post. I do recall listening to a radio program some time ago that was talking about train engineers, and they were relating the same. It was awful. I remember one engineer related how he was haunted by an incident with a teenage boy that had his headphones on, and was just walking down the tracks with his back to the train. The engineer thought the kid might have known and was committing suicide, but he could never be sure.
Wrong number guy: hi would you like to get your car- Me: wrong number Wrong number guy: are you sure? Me: I'm fifteen Wrong number guy: well would you like to purchase car insurance?
When I was in elementary school, I had a friend who wasn't exactly the most put together. After he gave me his house number (we weren't like those young'ns today with their cellular phones), I tried calling it. Me: Hi, this is jleopold, can I talk to Joe? Not Joe(NJ): I'm sorry you have the wrong number? Me: Thanks. hang up So, I tried again. Me: Hi, this is jleopold, can I talk to Joe? NJ: Wrong number again, sorry. Me: Hmm. I better check the number. Thanks again. hangs up So, I make sure I'm dialing right and try one more time. NJ: Still not Joe. Me: I guess he gave me the wrong number. Thanks again. hangs up Turns out, the right number was pretty different. But it all worked out in the end.
This didn't happen to me directly, but my father used to be a genealogist (researching people's family histories for them). As a child, I remember on more than one occasion when the whole house was woken by the phone ringing in the early hours with some poor woman on the other end asking for a gynocologist. The perils of reading the phone book at 4am!
Girl: Hi, is Jack there? Me: No, sorry, wrong number. Girl: Oh. Well, is Frank there? Me: No, wrong number. Girl: Oh. Is Dave there? Me: No, you have the wrong number. Girl: Oh... Well can you tell him I called? Me: YOU HAVE THE WRONG NUMBER. Girl: Oh... okay. click She called back. Twice.
I don't have anything that entertaining to say but I make a lot of phone calls as part of my day job. People can get pissed off when you call them. I can't read this person's handwriting, I'm sorry you had to do a thing for five seconds. Even customers get indignant. A couple times a week I hear something like "Who wants to know?" after asking if I have the right person. God I hate the telephone