This morning the phone rings. Here's the conversation:
-Hello?
-Hey, when are you guys coming to visit?
-Pardon me?
-Rob?
-No, I think you have the wrong number.
-Elaine?
-No, no, you dialed the wrong number.
And then she lets go what I think is the sentence of the year:
-Well, I'd like to talk to Rob or Elaine. Can't you go get them?
Unbelievable. I don't know who she thought I was, maybe their friends' butler, or the neighbor who was paying a visit and answered the phone. And I don't know what else to tell her.
-Sorry, you have the wrong number, which number are you trying to reach?
-My friends Rob and Elaine, at 507-9008.
-Well, this is 507-0008, and you have made a mistake when dialing.
-Oh, OK.
And of course she hangs up without even apologizing a little.
It's amazing to me how some people, when they dial the wrong number, they get annoyed and act like it is your fault, as if saying: "who the hell are you and why are you answering my friends' phone?"
Some years ago, when I lived in Boston, there was a woman who used to call. I don't know if she misdialed or had the number wrong, but she called me about twelve times in two years. And every time, after I said "hello?" she would always say: "who is this?" The first few times I would say "who are you trying to reach?" or "you have the wrong number," but at the end, all fed up, I would say: "I don't know, you should know who you're calling." And she would hang up without a single word.
But the worst, the ultimate worst that can happen to you phone-wise is if your number is very very close to a number which gets calls around the clock. This has happened to me twice in my life.
When I lived in Salt Lake, I had the 532-3347, with such bad luck that the Salt Lake Hilton had the 532-3344. Every once in a while (although not too often, fortunately), I would get a call at 2am by someone who asked me if he could talk to room 210, or something like that. And a few years later, when I arrived back in Barcelona, the number I got (934185429) had very recently been a fax of a large company in Terrassa, whose name I have forgotten. There was some time when I was receiving faxes at any time of the day or night. And some fax machines are programmed to repeat the call if they can't connect, like 5 times at 5-minute intervals... Once a guy from Argentina called me (at 11:30pm) asking why wasn't the fax working. It was a nightmare. I ended up changing the number.
