Sorry, Manager, But You Are Not Today’s Lucky Caller!

Growing up, my family’s phone number was 555-5070. There was a local radio station whose request line was 555-5700. We would get calls at odd hours of the night from people trying to request a song. (This was in the early 1980s, so answering machines weren’t widespread.) It was annoying, to say the least.

We assumed they were just reading the phone number out wrong on the air. Turns out, they weren’t quite reading it incorrectly. “Call us at Five-Five-Five, Fifty-Seven Hundred,” was interpreted by some of their listeners literally as 555-50-700. The last 0 wouldn’t register, so it would ring our house.

My father very kindly called the manager of the radio station and asked that they simply change the way they read the request line phone number on air. Unsurprisingly, the manager wasn’t receptive to that idea.

Manager: “We’re a radio station. We don’t have to change anything.”

So, the next time someone called, my father very excitedly told them they were caller number ten… and they had won a brand new car. All they had to do was come down to the station and mention that they had won it on the request line. He also told them that if anyone gave him any trouble, just ask for the station manager. He’d be able to sort things out.

As I recall, my father gave away two cars, and we never had a wrong number for this radio station again.