When people call and leave a message that makes it obvious that they’ve gotten a wrong number, I usually try to call them back and let them know. I do it so they can then contact the right person and actually communicate whatever it is that they wanted to say to whomever they actually wanted to say it to. About half the time, though, the callers get a little bit pissy when I inform them of their error. Sometimes they even argue with me, not quite getting it when I insist that I really don’t know Ezra or Laura or whomever. And they almost never thank me, even though I’m going out of my way to do them a favour.
That’s just one more bit of evidence, I guess, that the vast majority of people are jerks. Or idiots. Not that I really needed more evidence of this…
I do the same thing! About five times in the last year, I have had people leave substantive messages on my voice mail that weren’t for me…one call was trying to reach an employee of a work schedule. I called each person back and they acted annoyed, huffy & rude. And then I have the same “Hey! I’m doing you a favor!” reaction. But at least in the instance of the work schedule call, I hope that maybe I prevented someone from getting in the shit because she never got the message. People, ugh.
I occasionally get an errant email – I always try to make sure it’s not spam before I reply “I’m not the ‘dbrown’ you’re looking for”. I’ve gotten 1 thank you (of course, it was someone from Canada).