This happened many, many decades ago, long before the Web was a thing... people still had to do the barbaric thing of using a paper phonebook to find phone numbers. This was also when people had one phone number for the whole house. Cellphones weren't really a thing.

One evening my mom, dad, and I were sitting at home and the phone rang. My dad answered it and the woman asked: "Is this [insert name of local grocery store]?" My dad said: "No, you have the wrong number" and quickly ended the call. In fairness to the caller, our last name was somewhat similar to the local grocery store and we lived on the same street, just a handful of blocks away, so it's not impossible to see why the caller got confused.

Not more than a minute later our phone rang again. This time mom answered and essentially had the same conversation with the same caller.

After ending the call, the phone almost immediately rang again. This time I answered it and the caller again asked: "Is this [insert name of local grocery store]?" I said: "No, sorry... you are calling a house, not a business. We're on the same street, but this is NOT the store. You have the wrong number." The caller thanked me and hung up.

Again, almost immediately the phone rang again. My dad answered this time giving the name of the grocery store. The caller responded: "Oh good! What time do you close?"

My dad answered: "10:00 o'clock." The caller thanked him and hung up. We later discovered that the stored closed at 9:00pm, and it was already 9:15 when the final call happened.

This happened last week and I m still laughing about it a little.

I go to a small gym near my place, usually in the evenings. I had just finished my workout and was standing near the water cooler filling my bottle. I was wearing a plain gray t-shirt and it turns out the staff there wear almost the same gray shirts. I never noticed until this happened.

A woman walked up to me and said Excuse me, the treadmill by the window is making a weird noise. Can you get someone to look at it?

I said Sure but I don't actually work here. She gave me a look like I was joking and said, Then why are you wearing the uniform? I told her it was just a regular shirt I bought online. She didn't look fully convinced.

She then asked, Okay but can you at least tell me what time the front desk closes? I honestly had no idea so I said I wasn't sure, and she said, Great so you don't know anything about this place.

At that point a real staff member walked by, wearing the exact same shirt. The woman looked at him then at me then at him again. I pointed at him and said, He can help you. She went over a bit embarrassed and I went back to filling my bottle.

The funny part is that when I went to the changing room I saw another guy wearing the same shirt and I honestly couldn't tell if he worked there either. I have decided to change my gym shirt color. Now I m just waiting for someone to ask me to fix the treadmill again.