This still makes me cringe.

[STEELMAN]

This happened a couple years ago. My wife told me one day that someone keeps calling our house on the weekends, sounding drunk, and mumble something and then hang up. Our caller id just shows a phone number. It's not that big of a deal so I just tell her not to worry about it, but it happens 5-6 time over the weekends and goe on for several weeks. I finally get tired of it and when it happens one time I call back the number.

Me: Turns out to be the jerk in this case.
L: Lady who turns out to be a nurse.
Bobbie: Mentally handicapped boy.

L: Hello.
Me: Yeah, my name is STEELMAN and someone from this number has been prank
calling my house every weekend for the last month and I'm getting sick and
tired of it!
L:Oh. This is (some name) Nursing Home and I see on the caller id that your phone
is one digit off from the number of one of our patients mom.
Me: Oh.
L:Bobbie you need to come here and tell this man your sorry for bothering him.
Me: Oh no. That's alright.
Bobbie: I'm sowwy.
Me:That's okay. (hide my head)

He still calls once in awhile, but we just tell him he has the wrong number.

[Megg]

Ouch. That had to suck. Well, at least you didn't yell at the poor handicapped boy. It could have been worse.

[JustADude]

That's definitely "Awk-waaaard", with a capital "Awk", but I wouldn't really say you were sucky at all. Honestly, I'd say you handled things about as well as could be asked of you, given the situation.

You had no way of knowing what was going on before you called about it, so you had no reason to expect it to be a young man who wasn't getting (possibly not capable of getting?) the fact that he was dialing a wrong number. You handled the situation in a professional, if understandably irate, manner, and you were very polite to the child and staff once you were informed of the nature of the calls.

To me, you're as suck free as a busted vacuum-cleaner.

[STEELMAN]

I know I wasn't intentionally sucky, but it's just that this poor little boy just missed his mom and he ends up having to apologize to some mean guy for it.

[bigpedaler]

I know I wasn't intentionally sucky, but it's just that this poor little boy just missed his mom and he ends up having to apologize to some mean guy for it.

And you were supposed to know that HOW? Ease up on yourself, we all step on our d!cks once in a while. BTW -- YOU didn't make him apologize; the mean nurse did, and she probably knows him better than you do. (Hey -- even though he sounds like a little boy in your post, he could be OLDER THAN YOU ARE! Worked the nursing home scene -- TRUST ME!)

[Victoria J]

You called and stated your case, and then listened to the persons explanation. Nothing sucky about it.

So, let me tell you a story about a worse telephone faux pas...

A friend called my mothers house. I wasn't living there at the time, and hadn't been for some time. There was no reason for him to believe I would answer the phone there. There was no reason for him to believe that had I answered the phone there I would have been anything other than sensible and polite (I answer my own phone properly, I'm certainly not going to play silly games on my mother's phone).

So, anyway, he calls. And the phone is answered with a little old lady quavery voice. He decides it must be me, trying to wind him up... (no one has any idea why he decided this, not even him).

He decides to play along, and responds also in a quavery little old lady voice.

After a couple of minutes he realises something is wrong. This isn't someone he knows, he has dialled a wrong number.

To recap - he called up some innocent, competely unconnected, old lady and cruelly impersonated her.



I'd like to think he'd learnt his lesson but he was last seen claiming a hammer was actually made out of glass and when checking whether the parking permit for where he was parked was A or B returning and claiming that the sign said it was P (P as in Parking...).

The man is a loon.

Victoria J

[Birdie]

Eeeh, I can see why you'd wanna feel kinda sucky for that, Steelman. I probably would too, it is one of those things I'd sorta have randomly pop into my head and sorta grate at me for a few minutes. :/ It's just one of those things you really wish you hadn't said or done until it's a bit too late so I really wouldn't beat yourself up over it. You handled it well really, as it's already been said, you didn't come across as sucky in all honesty, you weren't to know.

[IvorTangrean]

I think I have you beet STEELMAN, I was getting similar phone calls. They started the day after I had this creepy mentally handicapped guy not top talking to me on the bus. So I assumed that that the calls were from him and got pissed at him a few times.

Found out later it was my Brother-in-law, who was in a serious crash a few years back and has never been the same.

Man did I feel like an ass.