Wrong Number Woes: How a Family Became the Town’s Accidental Library (and Got Sweet Petty Revenge)
Imagine picking up your phone, only to be greeted (for the umpteenth time) by someone trying to renew “Charlotte’s Web” or asking if that overdue copy of “Moby Dick” can get a pardon. Now imagine this wasn’t a one-off, but a daily ritual—because your family’s home phone number used to belong to the local library. Welcome to life in the accidental customer service lane, where patience is tested, creativity blooms, and petty revenge is a dish best served by dialing it in.
Most folks would lose their minds. But as one Redditor from r/PettyRevenge discovered, there’s an art to flipping the script on chronic wrong numbers—and turning a nuisance into a glorious victory lap.
It started with a simple, infuriating problem: u/CrossFitMathIsHard’s family inherited a phone number that had previously belonged to their town library. Despite their mother’s repeated pleas for the library to update their contact info—“begging for them to clearly block out our number in all of their books and put the new one on there”—the calls kept coming. Patrons dialed in, hoping to check due dates or renew bestsellers, only to reach a bewildered family in the kitchen.
The library? They didn’t care. The calls kept coming. Until, that is, the family decided to play along. “We all started ‘renewing’ books over the phone for patrons,” the OP confessed. That’s right: with the library’s indifference reaching new heights, the family turned their home into the unofficial, unauthorized customer support line, granting renewals left and right. Predictably, it didn’t take long for the real library to notice that their records were getting…creative. Soon enough, the calls dried up. Petty? Maybe. Satisfying? Absolutely.
But the real beauty of this saga isn’t just the original story—it’s how this scenario unlocked a flood of hilarious, relatable, and occasionally outrageous accounts from readers who’d suffered similar fates.
Take u/CoderJoe1’s favorite: a woman who inherited a former hair salon’s number. After endless pleas for the salon to update their appointment cards fell on deaf ears, she stopped correcting the misdialers and started rescheduling their appointments—to times the salon hadn’t agreed to. Suddenly, the salon’s phone woes became their own problem to solve. As u/sjclynn chimed in, the same tactic worked for a restaurant manager who refused to update his business cards—until they unwittingly “accepted a reservation for 10 at 8PM on a Friday night.”
And it’s not just libraries, salons, or restaurants. u/Ophiochos recounted a tale from London where their number was one digit off from both the local police station and the magistrate’s court. The result? Midnight calls from undercover officers (“The deal will probably go down tomorrow as expected”) and frantic messages about urgent court paperwork. Their solution? An annoyingly cheerful voicemail—though that didn’t stop a very miffed undercover officer from blaming them for nearly blowing her operation. Sometimes, the only defense is to unplug the phone and hope for peace.
Other readers reminisced about being mistaken for cab companies, pizza joints, daycares, and even adult movie theaters. u/Pretend-Usual4757 shared how their parents’ number was just one digit off the town’s cab company, so they started promising “we’ll be there in twenty minutes” to late-night bar patrons. u/PumpkinCrouton’s story took a serendipitous turn: their new number was one digit off from the backstage line at Crazy Horse (yes, the strip club), resulting in a brief, unexpected foray into a more colorful nightlife.
The creativity didn’t stop there. Some embraced the chaos with performance art, answering calls as “Joe’s Bar” or “John’s Taxidermy—we mount anything or anybody,” as u/lokis_construction gleefully described. Scam calls? No problem—just answer as “Happy Harry’s Mortuary” or “Fraud Squad,” and watch the scammers scatter, as u/MotherGoose1957 and others attested.
For some, these misdials offered a window into unexpected lives. One user, u/Applejack235, had to convince callers that the cacophony in the background was just their three kids—not a full daycare class. Another, u/Remarkable_Side_3647, finally gave up correcting a persistent elderly caller and pretended to be a Western Auto employee, only to later call the store and ensure the customer got her new tires.
But what’s the underlying message in all these stories? Sure, wrong numbers can be maddening. But they’re also a reminder that, in the analog days of landlines, we were all just a digit away from falling into someone else’s world. Whether you meet the moment with kindness, mischief, or full-scale petty revenge, there’s something unifying—and deeply human—about these accidental encounters.
As u/RaisinBlazer perfectly captured the meme-ified spirit of these moments, “Every time I read stories about the wrong number, the first thing my brain thinks is, ‘No, this is Patrick!!’” (a reference that sent others scrambling for the classic SpongeBob GIF).
So, what would you do if your phone number landed you in the crosshairs of your town’s bureaucracy, nightlife, or public services? Would you play along, fight back, or invent a new persona for every call? The next time your phone rings with a stranger on the line, remember: behind every wrong number is a story waiting to be told—or, if you’re feeling a little petty, a perfectly timed prank.
Have your own wrong-number saga or revenge tale? Share it in the comments—because in the digital age, some traditions (and misdials) are just too good to let go.
Original Reddit Post: Not the Library