Quote:
Originally Posted by WhiteTiger
Businesses are the worst for it, as you noted most have to dial '9' to get out. What makes it even trickier is that most businesses will dial 9 for an outside line, then 1 for long distance, then take a couple moments to look over the number and...by that time, your phone may assume you are trying to dial 911, fill the extra 1 in for you, and then you are talking to us. I don't know what the criteria is for a phone to fill in the extra 1, but a lot of them do, as the number of people I hear who say some variation on "I was dialing long distance and just paused to make sure I had the right numbers..." is very high.
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It doesn't help that for a lot of people their instinct is to immediately hang up when they realize that they've inadvertently dialed 911. At our office, the call just shows up as coming from the main line, so police call back the main line and ask who called 911, and there's no way to tell which of the hundreds of people who work there placed the call. So then an "office everyone" email has to be sent from reception so that person can be found and can confirm that they just messed up dialing, which takes up unnecessary time.
I've never understood why "dial 9 to get out" was a thing in the first place. Why not use pound? Pound never caused anyone any problems.