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ConfessionCONFESSION DETAIL
Phantom Pizza Delivery
This morning my cell phone rang. It was a wrong number. It's funny how the people who dial wrong numbers always seem befuddled and disoriented.
Anyway, the wrong number reminded me of something bad that I did a few years ago when I got a new cell phone. I kept getting phone calls from people who were looking for a pizza shop. After a few such phone calls, I figured out that my new cell phone number was previously the number of a pizza parlor someplace on the West Side of Los Angeles. At first, I dealt with this in a reasonably mature way, patiently explaining to callers that the number they were dialing was no longer the number for the pizza shop. But after a while I started getting tired of the phone calls, particularly late at night when drunks would get belligerent and argumentative when i tried to explain that they had the wrong number.
So finally, I capitulated to the inevitable. I just took the pizza orders. I'd say, "Okay, what size pizza do you want? What toppings do you want? What's your name and number?" And then I would tell them that the pizza would be ready for pickup in 20 minutes. And then I'd hang up and turn off the phone.
After a couple of months, I stopped getting phone calls for the pizza parlor.
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LOL.
When I get wrong number phone calls, I always tell the person to hold on for a minute while I look for the person they are trying to reach. Then I put the phone down on the desk and go in the living room and watch TV.
This strikes me as kind of cruel, but I have to admit that I find it annoying when people dial my cell phone by mistake. I never dial wrong numbers. Who are these people who dial wrong numbers?
You should have asked them for their credit card number.
But I have some questions for you: why do you think you did it? And how did you feel about it?
I experienced the same phenomenon when I lived in Boston. The telephone number I had for years was one digit different from Italian Express when it opened.
It took me a few weeks to figure out was going on. Rather than take people's orders, I gave them the correct number and told them to request the "$5 I bothered Tara discount." A couple of months past, and I met the owner, Victor, one night while out and about.
I told him what I'd been doing and he exclaimed, "That's you! I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on!" We had a good laugh and actually ended up going out a few times. Small world.
That's very funny. You should have started telling them about special deals and get them all excited about the pizza.
I had a very similar experience when I was in college. There were only two exchanges (the first three numbers in the seven-digit phone number) in town. The number for the local Domino's used one the exchanges and was known as being the same forward as backward. My dorm number (dorms had land lines back then) was also the same forward as backward. We would occasionally get people calling Domino's and one time (and only one time) I did take their own order. "Twenty to 25 minutes," I told the caller, referring to how long the delivery would be. I wonder how long they waited. They never called me back.