Just bought a 2m section of flexible tube for a gas stove, and the sales clerk asked first for my phone number, to which I replied “I don’t have one”. Then she asked me for my name, to which I replied “I’ll pay in cash”. She then insisted it was so “the cashier will call you by name”, to which I replied “I’m not giving you my name, I’ll pay in cash”. [Edit: she apparently got a bit upset when I refused to give info, but ended up entering “no name” according to the receipt]

Am I wrong for not wanting to give personal data for an item paid in cash, in person? No other hardware store ever asks me for my personal info.

  • atrielienz@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    8 days ago

    So, after that song rose in popularity, phone companies de-registered it entirely. Because it’s a number that no-one has, my guess is that some stores/businesses use it as shorthand to put a discount under for something like employee discount or for “we messed up, here’s a discount” discounts.

    • kent_eh@lemmy.caEnglish
      2·
      7 days ago

      So, after that song rose in popularity, phone companies de-registered it entirely

      In my area code, the number was intentinally bought by a local guy who runs a small ISP. He has it connected to an answering machine that plays the song.

      • atrielienz@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        7 days ago

        Yeah. Apparently that’s a thing. But there was a rise in prank calls that caused phone companies to just remove it from public use. But I guess that doesn’t account for people or companies specifically requesting it.

    • mystik@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      8 days ago

      I local plumber chain uses that number. YEARS ago they used to run a spot where they recited it with the same cadence of the song, but w/o the notes.

    • [object Object]@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      7 days ago

      A bit odd, because the US is specifically the one country that definitely has an area code that’s mostly reserved from civilian usage, i.e. 555. Although not all numbers in it are reserved, afaiu they aren’t given to randos anyway, and the store’s spam system could be set up to never text or call these numbers.

      I once looked up if there are numbers that I could safely use for testing purposes in my country, and we only have numbers from old popular songs, which curiously were also later referenced in tv shows. But it’s a toss-up as to whether they’re definitely unregistered in any particular area code. I’ll probably have to use ‘+1555…’ instead.