This reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer’s phone number was similar to “Movie Phone” and he ended up giving people times and locations of movies after getting so many phone calls.

But this story really happened, friends!

Instead of movies, this person is annoyed with wrong number phone calls intended for a doctor’s office.

Check out how this person handled this precarious situation!

You want me to answer your office phone for you while I am working from home?

“Several years ago, a friend (“Mark”) started a home-based computer software business.

He and his wife lived in their home for about 10 years and had a well-established home phone number.

This was around the time that cell phones were just beginning to be popular, so 95% of people still used mainly landlines.

Mark worked 2 pm-10 pm, the same shift as his wife, so his customers could be free to discuss their computer needs uninterrupted after their own businesses closed for the day.

Most computer maintenance still had to be done in person instead of remotely, so customers could drop off devices after work and pick them up from Mark’s back porch on their way to work the next day.

Uh oh…

All went swimmingly for a few months until a new doctor opened up a practice in town, complete with a telephone number differing from Mark’s by one digit.

Mark’s number had a ‘3’ where the medical office had an ’8’ in the last 4 number combination.

Mis-dialing was frequent.

At first there were occasional calls to which Mark would patiently redirect the caller.

It got worse.

As time wore on and the practice got more and more referrals from local hospitals to give Dr. Newintown an established client base, the calls began to come at all hours, 24 hours a day: weekends, nights, holidays, you name it.

The office still got calls after hours to an answering service for patients to find out who was on call, and for the hospital staff to reach doctors after hours.

Mark had to unplug the phone just to have a conversation over lunch with his wife, and in order to sleep.

Also not ideal when you have 3 daughters of dating age out after dark.

He reached out to them.

Mark called the doctor’s office and asked them to please change their phone number so he and his family could get some peace and quiet, and so he could build his own business to support them.

Since he had his phone longer, he felt the doctor should be gracious and change his number to a different one to stop the confusion.

He was told in about so many words by the doctor that it was too bad, but nothing was going to be done, as advertising, stationery, business cards and signage were expensive to redo, not to mention convey the new information to all his patients, medical registries, the medical board and societies, and hospitals.

“Just do the best you can, I’m sure the calls will stop soon. Good luck to you!”

“Okey Dokey!! I’ll do my best to take care of things!” Mark cheerfully replied.

LOL.

After that, Mark began to field all the calls that came in personally.

“You’ve had the sniffles all morning after working in the yard around pollen? You’d better come right in!”

“You start coughing every time you smoke a cigarette? Come on in!!”

“Hmm…I’m not the doctor, but a temperature of 98.9 sounds a little high to me. We’ll see you right after lunch today.”

“You’re new in town and have kids who need physicals and shots for school next week? It just so happens we have an opening in an hour. No, no, don’t worry we can take all 5 of them at once, today.”

The doctor eventually caved.

Whatever the problem was, he started making appointments for each and every person calling.

All were delighted to have such personal attention and prompt appointments. “Sure, we take ALL insurance plans. Come right in!”

He also made routine checkup type appointments for 4:30 pm one Friday afternoon for 6 different people.

Bright and early the next Monday morning, Dr. Newintown called and begged him to stop.

Mark said :”I will if you will.”

The doctor had a new phone number before the end of the week.”

That was a clever way to get the doctor to understand the problem.

Reddit users shared their thoughts.

This person shared a story.

Another individual chimed in.

This reader spoke up.

Another Reddit user weighed in.

And this individual had a lot to say.

The only thing he could do was play along and have some fun with it!

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.