Imagine walking into work, coffee in hand, ready for a quiet day, only to find your voicemail crammed with strangers begging to book chalets. That’s exactly what happened to one unlucky office worker after a company accidentally printed his phone number on 10,000 promotional flyers.
What started as a minor inconvenience quickly spiraled into nonstop ringing phones, confused customers, and one company’s refusal to clean up its own mess. Instead of rolling over, though, this worker decided to fight back with a healthy dose of petty revenge. Want the juicy details? Here’s how it unfolded.
A Redditor shared that after being promoted to his own office, he got a brand-new phone line
This fiasco highlights a classic case of corporate negligence and how one “minor” error can snowball into serious consequences for an unsuspecting individual.
According to marketing consultant Jennifer Gregory, businesses are legally and ethically responsible for ensuring that customer-facing details like phone numbers are accurate, because errors can cause “financial, reputational, and operational damage not just to the business but to uninvolved third parties”.
Phone number misprints aren’t just embarrassing, they can be considered a form of misrepresentation. A 2019 case in the Journal of Business & Economic Research noted that “errors in promotional materials directly erode trust and increase consumer frustration, often harming both the brand and bystanders unintentionally involved.”
On the human side, psychologist Dr. Guy Winch explains that being bombarded with intrusive calls can trigger stress responses similar to workplace harassment, especially when there’s no recourse or accountability from the source. It’s no wonder the OP eventually turned to petty revenge: psychologically, regaining even a sliver of control helps restore a sense of fairness.
Instead of brushing off responsibility, the chalet company could have offered solutions: paying to change his line, issuing corrected ads, or even publicly acknowledging the error. By refusing, they shifted all the frustration onto someone who had nothing to do with their business, a recipe for resentment and, in this case, sabotage.
Here’s how people reacted to the post:
This user related, sharing how they booked fake hair appointments after a salon misprinted their number
Some admitted to taking pizza and ham orders when their numbers were misused
One vented about collection calls for a deadbeat’s old number, dreaming of punching the culprit
This user noted the company’s helplessness once flyers were out but sided with the Redditor’s frustration
This person slammed the company’s incompetence, stressing the need to verify numbers
This user fantasized about overbooking chalets with fake discounts for maximum chaos
In the end, this was less about one man’s bad luck and more about a company’s refusal to take responsibility. When 10,000 flyers went out with the wrong number, they could have apologized and fixed things. Instead, they left a worker drowning in chalet requests he never asked for.
He turned annoyance into petty revenge, and Reddit cheered him on. What about you? Would you have redirected callers politely, or taken bookings until the company learned its lesson?
