A Moment Of Peace And Quiet? I Dont Have A Shot

One afternoon about two months ago my phone rang. Well, my phone has rung before that day, many times, mind you. What I mean is, this call was particularly strange. The person I spoke with was looking for free flu shots. I told him he had the wrong number and we both hung up. I returned to what I was doing, having no idea that this one wrong number was the beginning of a swarm of misdirected calls.
As the days passed by, I would come home from a long day at The Queens Courier as a reporter to find my Caller ID displaying the numbers of the people that had called that day. I didnt recognize any of the numbers or the names they were under. My voice mail announced five messages from people asking for flu shots and leaving their personal information.
I began calling people asking where they got this number. The majority of the people who admitted to calling were senior citizens who didnt understand why they didnt get the flu shot hotline. Some said they got the number from their local church, others mentioned various senior organizations. Soon, I was getting calls every 15 minutes from people seeking flu shots. As I spoke to people who had actually called for me, I would constantly get that call waiting beep from vaccine-hungry 718ers. At this point, even a saint would lose their patience. One caller said that the flu vaccines were being given for free by the Department Of Health (DOH). Free? I thought, oh, God, now everyone in Queens will be calling me!
Mustering all of my extensive three months of journalistic experience, I called my most reliable informant who could give me the dirt on anything or anyone I wanted to find out about411!
I called the Department of Health which is giving out these flu shots. Apparently what happened was their flu shot hotline (866) 358-5463 matched my number, except for the area code. They apologized but insisted that there was nothing they could do. After a few weeks it became apparent that competent adults who had been allowed to use such complicated electric devices as a telephone could not tell the difference between 866 and 718. Finally one caller gave me a lead on a culprit that could have been behind it all: the Queens section of the New York Daily News. I called the newspapers Queens offices in Forest Hills and spoke with the managing editor who apologized for the accident.
What happened was that Celeste Katz, one of the Queens reporters had done a story for the DOHs latest campaign and displayed the toll-free number as so: (866) FLU-LINE (358-5463). It amazed me, not so much that the phone number Id had for six years spelled out FLU LINE, but that so many Queens residents thought the number translation in parentheses was a separate, local number. The editor promised to change the ad, stressing the 866 area code.
The saga continued, with many more calls, many messages, and lots of deleting on my part. I called the Daily News again. Now I was getting over 30 calls a day. I found myself speaking to many people, correcting them and hearing their apologies. I decided to change my voice mail greeting.
"Hi, this is Daniel. Leave a message. This is not the number for free flu shots. That number has an 866 area code, not a 718. This is not the Department of Health, it is a private number much like the one youre probably calling from. If youve reached this number in error, show me a little courtesy and apologize. Thanks."
The urge to include, "too bad theres no vaccine for stupidity" was very strong, but I realized this was an honest mistake. that, had I been seeking flu shots and this was not my number I may have made the same mistake.