Scene: Tom sitting at desk at work.  (Yes, I do go to work.)
*ring! ring!*
“Thanks for calling Service-Oriented Finance Establishment.  This is Tom.  How can I help you?”
“Yeah, Tom, I need to do a price check.”
(Tom becomes intrigued, plays along.)  “Okay.”
“I need to know what your cheapest forty gallon water heater is.”
“Well, sir, we are a Service-Oriented Finance Establishment, so I don’t have any information on that.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.  I must have called the wrong number.  Thanks.”
“No problem.  Bye.”

This is only mildly amusing taken by itself.  It slides into intruiging when you consider the fact that we get these sorts of calls quite often.  I don’t mean “quite often” as in at least once a week.  I mean we probably get six or eight of these a week.  Many times they only say “Oh, sorry, I got the wrong number,” or they hang up on me (love that one, by the way, thanks).  However, the scant number of times that the caller has identified the nature of the call leads me to wonder just what in the hell people are using for a phone directory.

Last week I got a call for a doctor’s office.  After I identified myself the woman said, “Okay, my name’s Idont Listen, and I need to speak to Doctor Wallace.  I’m not feeling good.”
A few weeks ago I got about a DVD.  After I identified myself a second time the caller said, “Oh, this isn’t Walmart?”
We used to get calls for transmissions and engines.  That one was actually kind of frequent, so I was able to figure it out.  After I got the supposed number they were dialing, I looked it up and found out that our 800 number was one digit different from a transmission and engine company that sold stuff on eBay.  People were simply hitting one digit instead of another.  Before I figured that one out it was confusing, especially when the first or second time I answered one of those, a guy asked about an engine for sale.  For a split second I wondered how he knew what was in my garage.  Then I wanted to say, “Well, I’ve got this old Ford 351 that I’m thinking of getting rid of.  It’s a Cleveland block.  You need it?”

I have this feeling there’s a web site out there somewhere that directs anyone looking for any phone number for any business anywhere in the U.S. to dial our 800 number.  Next time you look up a number on the web and call a business, don’t be surprised if I answer the phone.