Some pranks start small but end up costing someone a whole lot more than a laugh.

So, what would you do if your old business number ended up in the hands of a rude stranger who insulted everyone calling for you?

Would you just let it go? Or would you hit him with relentless calls when he least expected them?

In the following story, one former contractor finds himself in this situation and decides that pranks are the way to go.

Here’s what happened.

Phone number revenge.

I started out as a specialty subcontractor as a floor layer. All my friends liked to make innuendo jokes about it.

So when I got my license, I changed it to “floor service.” But “floor service” was too close to “florist.” All my friends would call and ask for the flower shop. “Do you deliver?”

Back then, the phone company would list our phone number in the white pages in any way we wanted. But to have our business name in the “Yellow Pages,” we had to pay for a commercial number.

He wanted his business to appear successful.

Back then, the prefix on your number would tell people where you were located. People were clannish. They only wanted to call a local business. The phone co. didn’t care. For an extra fee they would sell you a “foreign exchange” number.

I lived in the city, but I wanted a number for the wealthy East Side suburb because that’s where all the work was.

What I didn’t know at the time was that the prefix placed me right in the downtown business core. It kind of worked. People thought I must be successful if I could afford the rent there.

His friends kept calling the number.

Fast-forward a number of years, and I took a step back. We started a family. I was needed at home more. I got enough work from referrals to keep me busy. Those Yellow Page ads were expensive. So, I gave the number up. (Three or four, actually. Every city and suburb had its own Yellow Pages.)

The phone company gave the number to someone else.

Well, the guy they gave the number to would get really mad and be rude to anyone who called the number looking for me. He got a caller ID and called them back to be rude.

Well, all those same friends started calling the number asking for the flower shop. “Do you deliver?”

When they were bored or needed a laugh, they called the number.

We were all relentless. Any time we were at a party and wanted to liven things up, it was “Hey guys, watch this.”

We’d call the number, ask for flowers, put it on speaker phone, and then wait for him to call back with his unhinged rants.

We all had a good time.

This guy had to give the number up to make it stop.

The guy would’ve spent a fortune to change it.

This was in the days when all business was conducted on paper, with carbon copies. “Carbonless” copies were high-tech.

This was a commercial number. This guy had a new business. I’ll bet he had to get all new business letterhead and business cards with the new number. No one had personal printers then, so they had to be done at a print shop. It wouldn’t have been a small expense.

He was a bigger jerk than my friends. No regrets.

Yikes! That is definitely petty behavior!

Let’s check out what the folks over at Reddit think about what he and his friends did.

This person discusses old phone company boundaries.

Yet another person reminiscing about how phone calls used to work.

This reader is not impressed at all.

Thankfully, no one is billed by the minute anymore.

What an immature thing to do!

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.