These pocket-dial stories will make you extra cautious about what you say about other people!
Stories edited for clarity
Calling His Friend’s Father?
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“Three years ago, my (now) wife and I had just started dating. I was about to go away for a week to attend a wedding. I was traveling down with two friends. One of the guys, who happens to be my best friend, calls me the day before we leave with his dad’s cell phone because his was dead at the time.
Flashforward to about two hours later. My girlfriend is over at my house helping me pack and get ready. Packing turns into some awesome intimate times. Well, my phone was on the bed. Somehow we had rolled over on to the phone and it redialed the last number, my best friend’s dad. He did not answer. That would have been funny enough but the result was even better. I ended up leaving him a voicemail, a very long voicemail. Neither of us knew.
Later that day, I go over to his parents’ house and his dad is there with his entire family. Now he is the only one to have heard it but he had mentioned to my friend I had left him a long voicemail. He proceeds to play it on speaker. The entire room is just losing it, laughing. After a few minutes, the automatic operator kicks in and you can hear her screaming between: ‘If you would like to make a call, please hang up and try again.’ So now the voicemail gets forwarded to me and I send it on to her without telling her what it was only telling her to play it on speaker. She was shopping in Wal-Mart with two of her friends and everyone has a great laugh. That voicemail made its rounds and was always a wonderful laugh. She had not met any of his family at this time. When she finally did, they said it was good to finally put a face to the moans.”
The Sprint Slide Phone With All The Problems
“I got a piece of crap Sprint slider phone that would pocket dial all the time. To try and prevent pocket dialing and people from going through my phone I thought it was a good idea to put a password on my phone. I was hard up for money at the time so I was fronting this 19-year-old kid pot and mushrooms to sell in his small town.
One day I went and met him down the street from my house and hopped in his car with illegal substances. I explain to him that it’s 750 and 350. We are hanging out and casually talking about business when I get a call from an unknown number being the paranoid parrot I am I don’t answer. The phone rings a second time so I better answer.
ME: ‘Hello’
PERSON: ‘Hi, this is a 911 operator your phone called us and I heard something you definitely did not want me to hear.’
ME: ‘Oh sorry I didn’t mean to call you.’
PERSON: ‘Is there an emergency?’
ME: ‘NO EVERYTHING IS FINE…THANKS.’
PERSON: ‘Have a nice day.’
Turns out. when the phone is locked there is an EMERGENCY CALL button and I pushed it when I put my phone in my pocket as I got into my friend’s car. This was motivation to stop selling illegal substances. I was expecting to have a cop knock on my door for the next month after it happened.”
That Made His Mother Call Back
“I have a friend of mine (who we’ll call TJ) with blonde hair occasionally styled in that swoop all the kids are doing nowadays, a slender frame, and a passion for theater. Also, far too intense of a personality to be smooth with the ladies. We both went to high school in a crappy town 30 minutes outside of Fort Worth, Texas. Needless to say, he received a lot of hate from rednecks for ‘being a fruity pebble,’ even though he isn’t gay. It also didn’t help that we were both friends with and hung out constantly with one of the few openly gay students at our high school (also one of my best friends, and we’ll call him Owen). Owen and I are also both jerks.
Owen would sometimes antagonize TJ by offering to do things for him or perform some other act on him because we all (TJ included) found the ‘fruity pebble’ accusations fairly hilarious. We were all sitting around in my garage, talking loudly and drinking one night when Owen starts up with the spiel again, telling TJ how well he can do stuff to a dude, me jumping in encouraging him to go for it, ‘any port in a storm, right bro?’ This goes on for maybe 10 minutes when all of a sudden TJ pulls his phone out of his pocket, his eyes widen, and he jabs the ‘end call’ button. Turns out he had pocket dialed his overbearing mother, who immediately calls back. He dashes out of the garage and we hear muffled raised voices for a while, and then he pokes his head in the garage and says: ‘Thanks a lot, jerks,’ and disappears.
We didn’t see him for almost a week, he came home to his hysterical mother asking him if he was gay and badgering him about hanging out with us, and trust issues, and all sorts of other things. Owen and I couldn’t make eye contact with his family for about a month after. I don’t think his parents ever really believed he was straight until he got his first girlfriend after high school.”
That Family Was Not A Fan Of The Boyfriend!
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“I was dating this girl on and off for a couple of years. I had a feeling her mom hated me but couldn’t prove it. I was a Freshman in college and she was a Sophomore. Her parents lived in the same town we went to school in, and I was best friends with her cousin. I was having a particularly bad night because my parents were in the middle of a divorce which ended with both losing the house that I grew up in. She was supposed to have dinner with her family but decided it best to just hang out with me instead.
After an hour, she asks if we can go to Ruby Tuesday, so we do. Guess who is there eating? Her entire extended family, including my friend and his parents. So blah blah blah, we eat dinner with a huge elephant in the room. The family never knew when we were on or off. We leave and I get a voicemail on my phone from my friend.
Everyone had apparently piled into the same car and girl’s mom just starts ripping me a new one. It’s been five years so I’ll try and recall it correctly.
‘When are you guys going to find my daughter a new boyfriend? What’s it going to take to get him out of her life? He isn’t good for anything. He’s poor and he’s gay. I can’t believe that my daughter would fall for a gay guy posing as her boyfriend. She looks stupid. She’s a good girl and deserves to be with a gentleman, not a heathen. He says he wants to get his Ph.D.? Is that feasible for someone like him? Last time I checked he was at community college. Who knows if he’ll actually transfer. Apparently, he’s worried about my money. I asked her ‘why is he worried about my money?’ she didn’t know.’
I’m not gay, not even a little (not that there’s anything wrong with that). I never once mentioned her money. The girl kept breaking up with me and I kept taking her back. I was from a small town but the girl’s mom grew up there too. We broke up for good about a year later. She still haunts me because I never wanted to break up. Her mom just hated me so badly. There was nothing I could do. I’m happy with my current girlfriend, but thinking about that girl puts a hole in my heart.
I let my haters be my motivators. I did transfer to my dream school. I am currently in graduate school studying public administration and plan on getting a Ph.D. in Public Policy.
Oh, and her cousin and I are still friends. In fact, I think we’re better friends than we used to be.”
That One Time He Listened To NPR
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“Once I was on my way to work listening to NPR, but not paying attention to it. It was mostly for background noise; I get a bit unnerved when I’m alone and it’s silent.
Anyway, after a few hours of working, I go to break and find that my mother has left me several voicemails asking if I am okay, where I am, and to call her back as soon as humanly possible.
Puzzled, I hurry to do so and she answers immediately. She tells me that I had called her on my cell phone that morning and all she heard was a man with a garbled voice saying things like: ‘I’m going to take her…she’s with me now…she’s going to die,’ or something to that effect. Understandably, she freaked out and had been calling me nearly nonstop, frantic with worry.
I had my phone on silent and it had been in my purse the entire time–how on earth could I have butt-dialed? And even if I had, who was the man? I checked my phone and saw that it had indeed made a call to my mother.
I assured my mother that I was quite alright and went back to work, feeling haunted and paranoid for the rest of the day. I might have broken down and cried in the bathroom at one point. When I arrived home I was still extremely frightened and talked it out with my mother and my grandparents. I started to walk them through my day, thinking we could figure out some sort of explanation for how my phone made a phantom threatening call. I mentioned turning on the radio in the car when my grandfather, an avid NPR fan, pipes up, saying he too had been listening at that time. It turns out what I had been listening to, or rather, not listening carefully enough to, was an interview with some guy with an addiction-filled and troubled past. If I remember correctly, he had been recounting the time he’d taken his sister hostage for money towards illegal substances, or something like that. I don’t recall the guy’s name, but he’s somewhat successful now and it was a rags-to-riches story.”
That Awkward Moment
“I pocket dialed a girl that I was semi-involved with while I was taking a pee. And it was the longest pee of my life.
I didn’t realize it while I was doing it.
She called me later that night and was like: ‘Did you just call me to pee?’ It was embarrassing, but we still laugh about it.”
A Turn Of Events!
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“Ex-girlfriend pocket-dialed me at 3 a.m. while out partying after a concert.
I found out she had cheated on me that night because she proceeded to tell her sister and a few friends about her fun evening while in line at a McD’s drive-thru.
Best part: I didn’t answer because I was asleep, so it was a saved voicemail. I kept it and played the waiting game. She pretended it never happened. She wasn’t going to own up to it.
A week or so later, I played the voicemail on speakerphone for her. Hilarity ensued.
By hilarity, I mean days of arguing. She tried to deny it. She tried to pretend it was a joke perpetrated by her sister. Her sister wasn’t a fan of me, and I didn’t like her either.
After a while, I got sick of dealing with it and dropped her sorry-self, moved out, and eventually met the lady who is now my fiancee.
Worked out for the better!”
He Played The Voicemail Back?
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“I was assigned to a group in Agriculture 101 and we had to make a presentation which was due a few weeks later.
Me being the great group leader I am, I decided to get everyone’s numbers and emails and assign them parts and call them individually to give them details. The last person I called was Greg. I felt good about myself because this was the first time I wasn’t procrastinating and I expected my group members to not have any problems because I put most the work upon myself. So I sleep easy that night, only to be awakened by my phone at 1 a.m.
Greg called me at 1 a.m. I think to my self: ‘WHAT THE HECK, GREG?!?! IT’S FREAKING 1 A.M. AND THERE IS STILL THREE WEEKS UNTIL IT IS DUE!’ then I do what any responsible group leader would do and put the phone on silent and go back to sleep. I wake up a few hours later, still annoyed that I was woken up, and I check my phone to see I have a voicemail. Yup, it was from Greg, so I check it to see what couldn’t wait until the morning. I hear rustling, and then Gregs muffled voice saying: ‘Uhh….huh,’ as if he was having issues breathing. At this point I’m thinking to myself: ‘Oh my gosh, this guy is dying and I was the last person that called him, he must have just hit send twice in desperation! and I woke up but didn’t even spend the time to answer.’
A minute or so passes by, and I’m still hearing the rustle of clothing on phone and suddenly I hear a girls voice: ‘Mhmm how do you like that?’ Then things started piecing together and I realized that Greg just pocket dialed me while he was sleeping with a girl. So, like the responsible group leader that I am, I listened to the whole thing (all seven minutes of it). And later on that day, during our group meeting, Greg arrived early and looked a bit tired. We sat down and I played him the voicemail and watched as he became uncomfortable and embarrassed.”
He Almost Got Fired?
“After I was hired for an internship at a large chip manufacturer, I got a call from my hiring manager explaining what I would need to do the next day when I flew across the US for the job to get my badge and whatnot. That went well and all. After the call, I went back to moving out of my dorm; a friend was helping me and the subject of a previous roommate came up.
As we both started ranting about what a jerk he was, I leaned against my desk (I’m assuming this is when my pocket call went out) and started swearing up a storm about how much I hated the kid. About 10 minutes later, I got a call from my manager again. He was furious; I was terrified. He overheard my rantings and I guess somehow assumed it was about him. He threatened to fire me if I didn’t have some explanation for what happened.”
The ‘Crazy Girl’
“When I was 15, I had this girlfriend that my mom not so cleverly nick-named ‘crazy girl,’ behind her back.
At first, I disapproved but the name was fitting. She kept tabs on me wherever I went, wanted me to get rid of all my female friends, and even once got mad at me when I hugged my cousin.
On this particular day, I was at the local college counseling center with my mom because I had just received a scholarship to take a college course over the summer. While talking to the counselor I could feel my phone buzzing for what seemed like 20 minutes. On our way back to the car, I pulled out my phone — 15 missed calls, all from the girlfriend. My mom pulls out her phone and says: ‘What the heck? 10 missed calls!’ I knew they were from the girlfriend as well, so I said: ‘Yeah, it’s the crazy girl at it again.’ My mom gets this look of horror as I’m laughing it up, apparently she was still calling and my mom accidentally answered while we were talking.
I grudgingly take the phone, accepting my fate, and this is what transpired:
Me: ‘Hello?’
C.G.: ‘What did you call me?’
Me: ‘Umm what?’
C.G.:’Were you calling me crazy girl? TO YOUR MOTHER?’
me: ‘What? No, I would never call you that. I was talking about my sister, she’s freaking out right now.’
It’s at this point in my life where I figured out how great of a mom I have. She started pretending to be my little sister in the background throwing a fit. Now I don’t know if she bought that story or she just decided to spare me that day, but I told her that I had to go and would call her later. She never brought it up again.”
Her Fourth Of July Shenanigans
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“Just the other day, I made some poor partying choices for the Fourth of July. I worked at my office job in a sea of old women and didn’t have to be at work until 1 p.m. the next day, so I figured I could be flexible with the amount of partying I did the night before.
I completely lost track of time and ended up drinking until 7:30 a.m. Needless to say, I was nowhere near sober when I woke up 30 minutes before I needed to be sitting at my desk.
I attempted to call in sick, but it went straight to voicemail. I promptly hung up, and put my phone in my pocket and started talking with my friends, while still wasted. Later, I noticed my phone had called my boss again, this time leaving a message of my wasted bantering.
I’m still not sure if she heard anything audibly through my pocket. All she said the next time I saw her was: ‘It’s okay. I was a 23-year-old girl once.'”
Her Father’s Girlfriend
“I have one of the Seinfeldian proportions. My dad got a new dog six months ago, and for Easter, my family went to visit my grandparents. My dad’s nice girlfriend watched our dog while we were gone, but she kept overfeeding him and he got sick. Well, my dad left his cell phone in the car on the way to the airport and when we got to the grandparent’s house, he asked to use my cell phone to call his girlfriend.
I dialed for him, but she didn’t answer and I thought I hung up when it went to voicemail. Sadly I didn’t hang up and had my phone in my lap while my whole extended family berated my dad’s girlfriend for making our dog spoiled and sick and how she was probably going to end up killing him inadvertently.
This was all in a message on her phone, of which she heard everything. It was hard to gain her trust after this because at that point she assumed we all hated her. Apologies were exchanged, and now things are ok.”
Coworker Car Rants
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“In a previous relationship, we were going through some difficult times and I had a laundry list of whiny little complaints. The job I had involved driving around and meeting clients all over the island, so during driving time, I would often spend time on the phone with one of my co-worker friends and we’d vent our frustrations and whatnot.
Well, during one of these rant fests (done on my work phone), my partner-at-the-time apparently called my personal cell phone, which somehow picked up without even ringing. After a long rant — ‘He’s home all day, but can’t be bothered to do any cleaning, dishes are piling up, late hours, loud, partying, etc.’ — I got to my destination and ended the call with my friend.
Then I pick-up my cell phone just in time to see it hanging up. I go into the call log and, yup, there it is, my partner had been listening for 30 minutes of a much longer rant session. I tried to call back once and there was no answer, so I just figured I’d deal with it when I got home.
A few hours later, I arrive at our apartment to the sound of the vacuum cleaner. A tremendous amount of house cleaning has taken place, the kitchen is clean and dishes are done. My partner hasn’t said a word.
Me: ‘I know you heard my conversation with [co-worker].’
Him: [silence]
Me: ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
Him: ‘No.’
Me: ‘Let me know if you change your mind.'”
A Robbery Went Down!
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“Got a call close to midnight a few years back from a number I didn’t know and I picked up to say hello. I instantly heard on the other line: ‘That idiot didn’t pick up his phone.’ I said hello again, but there was no response – whoever called me had placed his phone in his pocket, assuming the call was over, me still on the line. I was about to hang up, thinking it a wrong number when I distinctly heard from another voice: ‘Well if he didn’t pick up, it means he’s asleep.’
So, clearly, someone there knows who I am. I decide to listen in a bit. What I heard over the course of the next 10 minutes brought my blood to a boil. They began to talk in great detail about robbing my apartment – they had ski masks, a baseball bat, and a fake weapon. I was right there, sitting in my apartment, listening as they went through a play-by-play of what was to happen within the next hour and I still had no idea who these guys were.
I placed my cell on mute and walked to my neighbors, who I knew. Calmly, I told them what was up and they called the cops while I continued to eavesdrop. They knew where we hid the spare key. They knew where I kept some cash. Clearly, these people had some inside knowledge.
Cops got there within five minutes and they decided it would be best to wait in my apartment as I fed them information on what the suspects were up to (stopped by a gas station for a soda, gotta rob while hydrated). Finally, it was apparent they were in my neighborhood and the cops turned off the lights and took their place.
I watched from my neighbor’s window as two men dressed in black proceeded to take my hidden key (in a hollow rock) and quietly open the back door. They were in it for all of 10 seconds when the lights came on and cops were screaming at them with weapons pointed to get down. Busted.
Come to find out, my roommate’s messed up cousin decided to rob me while he was out of town. They decided to call me with an unfamiliar number to make sure I wasn’t awake. Worst and best accidental call.”