Fun on the phone - real ones but they are not malicious

[Glenn E. Meyer]

This is a take off on the pizza, google, health phone joke in the Joke thread.

This is for real interactions on the phone.

1. My friend had a number that was one off from the garbage pickup service. He would occasionally get a wrong number. Most folks were polite. One was from a cranky old lady that said her garbage wasn't picked up. He said that you have the wrong number. She said he was a lying SOB trying to cover his butt. So he said that he apologized, she was correct. In fact to make amends, he would personally come by her house tomorrow at 6:00 AM to get the garbage and give her a coupon for a year's free service. She should wait by the can in the morning.

Of course, no one would be there and it would be fun to hear the call to the real garbage number as she insisted on her coupon.

2. Many years ago, when broke I had a phone job. We called folks to get them to listen to music and say which ones they like at this would be collected to determine radio station play lists. This was so long along that we used ripped out pages from old phone books to get numbers. Of course, some folks weren't delighted to get the call. So, I call this old guy and he says: How did you get this number. It is a secret number for the CIA and I will call your boss and get you fired.

Now this is some old fart thinking he is clever and can scare a kid. So I say: Really, the CIA - well, I'm going to write your number on the walls of local bars for a good time and oral interaction. Have a nice day.

It was a crap job.

I have another one if the thread takes off.

[Totem Polar]

This is a take off on the pizza, google, health phone joke in the Joke thread.

This is for real interactions on the phone.

1. My friend had a number that was one off from the garbage pickup service. He would occasionally get a wrong number. Most folks were polite. One was from a cranky old lady that said her garbage wasn't picked up. He said that you have the wrong number. She said he was a lying SOB trying to cover his butt. So he said that he apologized, she was correct. In fact to make amends, he would personally come by her house tomorrow at 6:00 AM to get the garbage and give her a coupon for a year's free service. She should wait by the can in the morning.

Of course, no one would be there and it would be fun to hear the call to the real garbage number as she insisted on her coupon.

2. Many years ago, when broke I had a phone job. We called folks to get them to listen to music and say which ones they like at this would be collected to determine radio station play lists. This was so long along that we used ripped out pages from old phone books to get numbers. Of course, some folks weren't delighted to get the call. So, I call this old guy and he says: How did you get this number. It is a secret number for the CIA and I will call your boss and get you fired.

Now this is some old fart thinking he is clever and can scare a kid. So I say: Really, the CIA - well, I'm going to write your number on the walls of local bars for a good time and oral interaction. Have a nice day.

It was a crap job.

I have another one if the thread takes off.

Wazzu (washington state U), late 80s, when the place had an international reputation as a party school. Luck of the draw: one semester, our new apartment phone was one digit (4 in place of the 7) off from the cheap pizza delivery place in town. Weekends sucked; game days were even worse, as our phone rang off the hook. Tried to get the phone co to give us a new number, no dice. We soon started taking orders; "...and remember, if it's not there in 30 minutes, your PIZZA IS FREE, GUARANTEED!"

The pizza place got the phone co to honor our request, evidently.

[NEPAKevin]

Back when telemarketing was done by actual telemarketers, I answered the phone at work and this woman, I would guess a late thirties, southern, African American, says in a sultry voice, would you like to receive videos of beautiful women having sex with attractive men and women... I look over at the guy we called "Big Ed" Vietnam veteran, cross country tractor trailer driver during the seventies and the senior heavy duty wrecker operator, and a SME in busting balls and simply said, "it's for you... " and handed him the phone. The fun part was not just listening to him ask her stuff like "if she was in the movies" and "what was she wearing" but watching the looks on the faces and body language of the girls in the office as this went on for probably a good fifteen minutes or more with increasing degrees of raunchy dialogue. Keep in mind that telemarketers were to follow a flow chart and were not allowed to hang up unless a sale was completed.

[Edster]

Back before it was all computerized robo-callers, the telemarketer started with, "Sir, you have been selected for...."

Me: "Wait... selected!? You mean you didn't just grab my number at random? Ohmygod, I've never been selected for anything. I was always picked last for teams in school. How did i get this honor? What was the criteria?"

This went on and on. She never even got to tell me what I was selected for.

[El Cid]

Fake but makes me laugh every time. It's from the movie Ruthless People. Of course this was easier before caller ID, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVLNs3QsV48

[LOKNLOD]

1. In the dorms we had landlines, and they were frequent for telemarketers. One night while i was eating dinner a guy called to sell me magazines at discount, and i was "very interested" and he spent a long time listing out every mag they offered so I could make choices. Finally my phone rang with another call so I told him I was still interested but had been waiting on this call for a school project so please just stay on hold and i'd be back shortly. I proceeded to chat with the buddy that called a few minutes and then noticed the other light went out, and noted the guy had hung up. He then calls back, so I switch over, and he says they got "disconnected" so he just wanted to call back so we could finish. I told him nah. Dude was PISSED, about how I had wasted all his time -- yes, I wasted his time by answering a cold call from him in the middle of my dinner.

2. Growing up when call ID became common enough we could identify telemarketers ("unknown caller") we would answer the phone in our best SlingBlade Carl voices. Usually good for a giggle.

3. Just recently a lady called me and when I answered proceeded to inform me that I "don't sound like her son in law..." at which point we laughed cause I said she didn't sound like my mother in law, either.

4. Dad had a small mechanic shop, and his number was the same as the Ford-NewHolland tractor dealer's parts desk, except the last 2 digits were transposed. He got frequent calls from farmers looking for their parts, usually a couple times in a row because old farmers are stubborn (and know everything about everything). One old fart kept calling him back and then argued with him that he was in fact the parts desk and there was no way he dialed wrong. After several attempts to correct him, Dad finally gave up and told him his parts were ready, please come pick them up. I hope that was right because if he drove very far to town and they weren't, I bet the parts desk guys caught hell.

PS if you like ornery phone pranks and aren't familiar with the work of Roy D. Mercer, fix that immediately!

[Wondering Beard]

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/e9/20/e6/e920e649b444265485ab2c5189e290cb--things-to-do-random-things.jpg

[SecondsCount]

One if my favs.
https://youtu.be/mkdoogjic4I

[Malamute]

Ive taken messages for wrong numbers. Seriously. I got somebodys old number, guy called looking for a girl he met in the .mil, called her folks asking for her number. I found them and passed it along. When a drunk "old buddy" of the dad called in the middle of the night once, I discovered why they changed their number. :) I passed on that he had called, they said he was why they changed it.

Once in a while I get a wrong number, when asking who they were looking for, I sometimes knew the number off the top of my head, or would look it up for them.

Yeah, small community.

[Edster]

After I became executor of my mom's estate, I started getting all her mail. AARP also linked my phone number to her as well.

I probably dont't need to explain on a firearms forum why I take a pretty dim view of AARP anyway.

After about the umpteenth time of them calling to sell life insurance, medicare gap coverage, or whatever to a dead woman, I explained it to them:

"You know, if anybody should have a good system for taking dead people off their call list, I WOULD EXPECT IT TO BE YOU."

[Jim Watson]

I don't know who Tony is, but I have been getting calls for Tony for years from all sorts of locations. I just tell them this is not Tony's place. The rate has dropped off, though.

My parents once got a new phone with a number previously belonging to a staunch church member and so listed in a church directory. They got calls based on that old church directory for DECADES before all the little old ladies died off.

[JTQ]

1. My friend had a number that was one off from the garbage pickup service.

When I was a kid, ours was one off from a nearby retirement home. To get the front desk for service, the residents had to call the full outside line phone number, one off from our home phone number. The phone would ring, my father would answer, "Hello?" The little old lady on the other end of the line would say, "Sir, could you send somebody up to get my tray, I'm done with dinner?" My father would calmly say, "Sure, what room number? We'll have somebody right up." He'd then hang up.

I grew up in the city of East Cleveland, Ohio, a predominately black community, we are white. We'd often get a call for "Leroy", or some other such "ethnic" name, right in the middle of dinner. My father, would answer sounding as white as he was, and holding the phone to the side, call out in a loud voice "Leroy, are you here?" He'd wait a couple of seconds, then respond "Sorry, Leroy doesn't seem to here right now" and then hang up.

[JTQ]

Years ago, I worked at the USAF Operations Center as a Duty Officer. We tracked activities throughout the USAF world for the Air Staff. At the time, the USAF was hauling the killer whale Keiko, the star of the "Free Willy" movies, from the Pacific Northwest (Oregon or Washington) to a retirement pen in Iceland, on a C-17. The C-17 was fairly new, and we didn't have many of them, but it was the only plane that could haul a creature that size, in commensurate sized tank, and land on an airfield as short as the one in Iceland.

The USAF Ops Center didn't normally track cargo aircraft movements, but since Keiko was a movie star, and the event was in the news, the Generals and the rest of the Air Staff, were interested in the success of the mission, so we got tasked to track down Keiko's movement.

I called Air Mobility Command, who runs all the USAF cargo movements and tracks them by either an aircraft tail number or by mission number. Since we, at the USAF Ops Center, don't typically track such stuff, I had neither piece of information, and really didn't think I'd need it.

I got a young Sergeant on the line at AMC Mobility Center and asked what was the status of the C-17 with "Free Willy" the killer whale on board?

AMC Sergeant - "Sir, do you have a mission number?"

Me - "No"

AMC Sergeant - "Sir, do you have a tail number?"

Me - "No"

AMC Sergeant - "I'm sorry sir, I can't help you. I need either a mission number or a tail number, in order to help you."

Me - "Sergeant, how many C-17's do we have in the inventory at this time?"

AMC Sergeant - "Sir, about 20."

Me - "How many of those are flying around with a killer whale on board?"

AMC Sergeant - "Sir, let me have you talk to the Major."

[SeriousStudent]

After moving into a new apartment in a new city, I used to get a bunch of calls for "Janet". Of course, these were always late at night, and the guy that called frequently seemed to be intoxicated.

After about the third time explaining he had the wrong number, I would simply tell him that "Janet was upstairs with a customer."

The resulting diatribe regarding Janet's faithlessness was worth the previous calls. It also ended further wrong numbers.

[JohnO]

I don't know who Tony is, but I have been getting calls for Tony for years from all sorts of locations. I just tell them this is not Tony's place. The rate has dropped off, though.


Has Tony called looking for his messages?

[Lomshek]

My uncle, one of the most curmudgeonly old professors our local university has ever hired, had a phone number that was very similar to the local Walmart. He'd get multiple wrong numbers a day.

Like a lot of folks in that situation at first he tried being polite but quickly gave that up when folks demanded he tell them the right number or flat out didn't believe him. Sometimes he'd put the caller on hold, sometimes he'd "transfer" the call to another department.

He's a fan of all things German and speaks enough to get by so he eventually recorded a message in German on his answering machine that said something like "This is not Walmart. Please hang up and dial the correct number you dumb ass." I'm sure folks who got that message were weirded out whether they spoke German or not.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

German:

When my wife and I moved cross country when I finished my post-doc and got a job, we needed a washer/driver. This was in the days before easy use of credit cards. A store offered 3 monthly payments. So, I ordered the machines. However, the store wanted a reference from work. However, I wasn't starting the job for a couple of weeks and they wanted someone I had worked for , for a year. My post-doc supervisor was a very famous neuro-ophthalmologist from Germany. Think he was on the wrong side of the war, way back when but brought here with other scientists. Anyway, he was a grumpy old bastard I couldn't see him making a phone call for a washing machine. My wife said - what can we do? I asked the store if a phone call from the old boss would work. They said that it would. I told her - wait.

In a couple of hours, I called them and got the dude and in my best German accent (I had an Austrian grandpa) said:

This is Doctor X, chairman of neurobiology from the University of X. Why do I have to call across the country for a goddamn washing machine for Meyer. Of course, he worked for me. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME! GIVE HIM THE WASHING MACHINE!

The store dude - said - Yes, Yes - doctor!!

My wife was horrified watching me do that - and we got the machines the next day.

[MistWolf]

We were living in a house my grandfather owned in South Central L.A.. Rent was cheap and it was close to where I was working. I get a phone call from telmarketer during a fund raising campaign the United Negro College Fund.

"Good morning sir. Would you like to contribute the the United Negro College Fund?"
"Tell me more about it. What to they do?"
"They raise funds to pay for kids within the community to go to college."
"All kids?"
"That's right, sir."
"Even mine?"
"Yes sir. That's correct. They pay college tuition for all kids in the community, even yours. Anything you can contribute will help."
"Even white kids?"
"Uhm...?"
"My kids are white."
Crickets

[Clusterfrack]

I was somewhere north of Tri Cities WA driving with my long-range rifle partner to the Scout Sniper Challenge. My cell phone rang and I decided to answer even though I didn't recognize the number.

Me: hello?

Vijay: hello, this is Steve from Microsoft technical support. I am calling about the virus on your Windows computer.

Me: I have a virus on my windows computer? Oh no!

(Buddy starts cracking up)

Vijay: I will need your credit card and social security number for identification.

Me: ok Steve, do you have a pencil?

Vijay: yes I have a pencil

Me: listen very carefully Steve. I want you to pull down your pants and shove the pencil up your ass.

Vijay: ...

Me: Steve? Is the pencil in your ass?

Vijay: Yes?

(Tires screeching as my buddy almost crashes the truck)

[pangloss]

When I was in college, I had a couple of friends who lived in the same dorm room and had the same phone number for three years in a row. I would periodically call and as to speak to Leroy (always Leroy). They would politely explain that I had the wrong number. Then I would recite the number back to them but switch the last two digits (always the last last two). Sometimes I only did this once per semester and sometimes I called every couple of weeks. A few years after we graduated, I confessed, and they never had any idea that I was the one calling.

[Sero Sed Serio]

When I was in high school, I was the only person in the country to get excited about "NO CALLER ID" calls between 5 and 7 p.m. I would answer the phone "KFAZ Radio, you're on live." Most of the time the telemarketer would hang up, but a few were caught off guard enough to hesitate, and would usually respond with a confused "uhhhhhh," giving me time to grab the morning paper. "Hello, caller," I'd say, "we're talking to our guests about..." and I'd pick a story at random from the front page. Every so often I would get a telemarketer to give me an "on air interview" on the issues of the day, while my mom, sister, and I would desperately try to avoid eye contact to keep from cracking up.

[LOKNLOD]

I was somewhere north of Tri Cities WA driving with my long-range rifle partner to the Scout Sniper Challenge. My cell phone rang and I decided to answer even though I didn't recognize the number.

Me: hello?

Vijay: hello, this is Steve from Microsoft technical support. I am calling about the virus on your Windows computer.

Me: I have a virus on my windows computer? Oh no!

(Buddy starts cracking up)

Vijay: I will need your credit card and social security number for identification.
)

This reminds me of getting a similar call on my cell while at work. I led him down a branching path ("my work computer or my home computer?" ) eventually getting stuck when he asked me if I was at my key board and i said I didn't have one, and tried to explain that it was a touch screen only. The confusion in his voice was amusing. Finally just hung on him, persistent little bastard.

[blues]

I've used my ability to mimic voices or accents to locate targets of investigation and subsequently arrest them.

In one case, a Russian OC guy involved in the illegal sale of Eastern Bloc military ordnance spent some time on the phone with a "Dr. Gupta".

During his post arrest interrogation interview I asked him if he had spoken to an Indian doctor on the phone that morning prior to his arrest. He said he had and when I said (in Indian accent) "that was me" he nearly stroked out and tried to jump across the table at me.



In another case I put on my best Colombian accent thinking I was calling some guys involved in a narcotics trafficking organization to come and pick up their cocaine before it ended up seized.

Turned out the three guys that showed up (armed) to pick up the load at a storage facility had nothing to do with the case but as they said, "opportunity knocked". I asked them how they knew where to go to retrieve the dope and they said some Colombian guy called on the phone in a panic and gave them the info where to go. When I told them I was the Colombian guy they looked at me like I had three heads and refused to believe I had made the call. That is until I recited pretty much what I had said on the phone.



As a kid in the early 60's, my favorite phone prank was calling the manager of the Main St. movie theater, (who had fired me for my tossing leaflets I was supposed to distribute), and playing the telephone recording of the current and upcoming features which were being presented at the location.

Hearing him yell, "what the fuck?" every time he picked up the phone and heard his business recording played back was beyond divine justice to the evil little prick I was at that tender age. (I used a cheap tape recorder my dad had given me as a gift to fulfill my evil plan.)

[alohadoug]

I'm a fan of answering the "telemarketer" calls this way:

Phone rings and I picked up and say (before they can say anything): "It's done. Where do you want me to hide the body?!.....Oh shit!" Then hang up.

Only had the Police show up once....officer got a good laugh....

[RJ]

Man the good old days.

These days if I ever answer the phone (very rare) it's always Julie from Cardmember services.

Anymore, if it's a number I don't recognize (there are maybe 5 people I accept calls from, related to me by blood) I generally cancel it, then add it to my SPAM contact, which I have blocked from ringing.

This works pretty well as a couple times a week I see a recent call from SPAM go by.

One thing: Are you guys seeing robot calls from within your phone's exchange?

My phone is (say) area code 123 456 7890. Do y'all get calls from 123 456 xxxx? Seems like they are trying to get past the caller ID and make people think "oh, 456, it must be a neighbor..."

[Clusterfrack]

Man the good old days.

These days if I ever answer the phone (very rare) it's always Julie from Cardmember services.

Anymore, if it's a number I don't recognize (there are maybe 5 people I accept calls from, related to me by blood) I generally cancel it, then add it to my SPAM contact, which I have blocked from ringing.

This works pretty well as a couple times a week I see a recent call from SPAM go by.

One thing: Are you guys seeing robot calls from within your phone's exchange?

My phone is (say) area code 123 456 7890. Do y'all get calls from 123 456 xxxx? Seems like they are trying to get past the caller ID and make people think "oh, 456, it must be a neighbor..."

Exactly! When I see prefix 456, I don't answer because I know it's Julie or Vijay.

[NEPAKevin]

One thing: Are you guys seeing robot calls from within your phone's exchange?

Yup. All the time. Unless I am expecting a really important call i.e. doctor's office, I let it go to voicemail.

[blues]

Yup. All the time. Unless I am expecting a really important call i.e. doctor's office, I let it go to voicemail.

As well as (spoofed) phone numbers very close to my own cell number...guess they really try to make you think it's a local call from someone you know.

I don't answer anything unless I know who it is.

[Wondering Beard]

I don't answer anything unless I know who it is.

Same here.

Somehow, I tried to "like" your post and ended up liking, then unliking and liking again. It's going to be a weird day.

[Coyotesfan97]

Yes and the bastards are doing in on my work phone so it looks work related