Dial "9" first - it's not that difficult folks!

[mashiroikaze.livejournal.com]

First real post - hope you'll forgive the only cursory-to-support nature.

At my job, if you want to call outside of the university you have to dial "9" first. I would hope that people would learn this fairly easily. And yet...

See, the problem is that my extension happens to be the same as the area code plus the number "7" - which correlates to every downtown number for my city. This means that I'm constantly getting people calling me by mistake. My favorite are the people who fuck this up with their fax machines set to auto redial. Then there are the people who misdial, realize their mistake before the phone finishes ringing once, hang up, and make the same mistake again. Rinse, repeat 2-3 times.

Seriously folks - if you can't figure out the telephone system, just stop using the phone.

Comments

[ptomblin-lj.livejournal.com]

I used to work for the local phone company. I thought it was really cool when they told me my work number was 777-7778. At least, I thought it was cool until I realized the reason why it was currently unused - when you dialed internal calls, you were supposed to leave off the first 777-, which means I spent my day explaining that fact to a dozen people a day.

After a few weeks of this, I set my outgoing voice mail message to "I'm just a lowly programmer here. If you need me, my cell phone is xxx-xxxx. If you reached me by accident, try leaving the first 777 off the number.", and then I turned off the ringer. And then once a week I'd listen to all the messages with requests to provision a switch in East Bum Fuck, people at the front security desk who didn't realize that the security desk's phone was on an internal line, or people complaining about their phone bills.

[wyldthyng.livejournal.com]

argh! do you get people dialing 911 when they're trying to dial elsewhere in the States or Canada? (that's assuming you're from one of those countries... ahem!) ... I've worked for a couple companies that got fed up and changed the system so you actually have to dial 9911 to get 911 service... because people dial it, and then contrary to what they're instructed to do, they panic and hang up, and hten the cops show up (they have to) and are all pissed off (I'd be, too).

[superbus.livejournal.com]

The first thing I ask in any networked phone system is "is it necessary to dial 9?", because that's necessary EVERYWHERE.

People really are stupid.

[knirirr.livejournal.com]

My flat phone number used to be exactly 1 digit shorter than the local Inland Revenue office. Unfortunately, when disturbed by wrongly dialled calls in the early morning it was sometimes too hard to resist:

Caller: Hello, put me through to $DEPARTMENT.
Me: No.
Caller: Er.... Why not?
Me: Because you've been naughty! <click>

[meijhen.livejournal.com]

At the last job I was at, the accounting person in charge of payroll had a phone extension that was the local area code (and in our US city, it is required to dial all 10 digits of a local number). She got a LOT of people calling her.

But because our phones made a series of sounds when dialing outside, that was different than dialing inside, most people realized their mistake before she ever picked up the phone. She just always got in the habit of letting it ring once or twice to see if it really was her they wanted to talk to!

[crazdgamer.livejournal.com]

My phone number is one digit off from that of a local court.

Me: "crazdgamer"
Them: "Ummm... yes... uhhh... I need information regarding this traffic ticket."
Me: "WELL THEN YOU SHOULDN'T BE SPEEDING NOW SHOULD YOU?"

-------------------

Me: "crazdgamer"
Stupid Woman: "I need to know why my son has been jailed."
Me: "WELL THEN YOU SHOULDN'T BE SPEEDING NOW SHOULD YOU?"

[ateji.livejournal.com]

Oh, fun. I remember someone coming up to me at work and asking if I was dialing nine on the fax machine. "Was I supposed to?"

"Yeah."

"...it's my first job. Why didn't anyone bother to tell me this?"

"Uhhh..."

[fenrirvallin.livejournal.com]

Some of my highschool friends had the best one. Couple of guys in a house, 2 of them were managers at Domino's Pizza.

The town has a 442-xxxx and 443-xxxx prefixes.

442-xxxx was Pizza Hut. 443-xxxx was their number. They would answer the phone on friday nights with "Hello, Pizza Hut."

Then it was time to tell them that there were two and a half hour wait times because they were short staffed, their driver's car broke down, the kitchen caught fire, they were closed for the day because of food contamination, etc.

The meanest was when they would take the order and act like everything was okay.

[yndy.livejournal.com]

a) would check with the phone guys to see if you can get a different extension...

b) I had a woman who didn't get that "dial 9 to get out" and would constantly try to fax things from inside the company to my extension... I got in the habit of transferring the fax machine call back to her extension whenever she'd do it... I figured if I had to hear the annoying whine and fuzz, so did she... I figured out who it was by redirecting the call to a fax program - and seeing who the 'sender' was.

[spooforbrains.livejournal.com]

I had a weird situation once. I dialled a four digit internal extension ... and got some random person's house. We had a short, bewildered conversation, and then I redialled and it worked. Weird.

The other was when calling the tech guy of a company I was doing a training course at to remind him he was supposed to be attending a course. Turned out his number was one digit away from a porn line, and I was dialling him on the presentation equipment. Hee.

[major-error.livejournal.com]

I love when people forget to dial 9 here. Especially when they're trying to connect to a 888 number.
From the moment we had it set up, I've let the helpdesk extension ring at least twice...