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Comment by joelgrus | Hacker News Reader

Wow, this really sucks for whoever has the phone number that I had in 1991.

And for whatever numbers they typed in when I refused to even make up one myself.

When I visit the hair cutting place, they refuse to serve you without a phone number. So I always give them the standard TV placeholder: xxx-555-1212.

The stylist is often confused why there are 20 people with that phone number.

If the other person is young enough, you can almost always get away with 867-5309.

I used to use this at the grocery store/kmart/wherever and just tell them to pick the top name off the list of 50 or so that came up per area code, (woohoo key constraints!) but eventually they caught on.

Poor Jenny can't get a rewards card anywhere these days.

Jenny's doing just fine at CVS; she's earned a bunch of rewards

For a while Meatball Shop (a New York mini-chain of, well, meatball-focused bar/restaurants) was doing this for takeout orders placed in the restaurant.

I'm not sure if they still do, but it basically meant whoever was the poor person assigned to the takeout counter that day had to spend at least half their time dealing with people saying "Why do you need my phone number? I'm right here!"

I think they said it was to track customers' ordering patterns over time, which was interesting, but also kind of overkill (and probably misleading, since they wouldn't know when the same people sat down to eat in the restaurant or at the bar).

555-1212 is directory assistance generally. There are a few other 555-xxxx numbers allocated, too.

Another trick is to use a 1 in the first nxx, so npa-1xx-xxxx. Downside is that some basic US telephone checks/regex might fail it.

I wonder what they would do if you told them you didn't have a phone.

probably try to sell you one (with a $14.99 insurance policy)

"🎶 cell and a haircut - two bits! 🎵"

At one point that number was universally owned by TellMe/Microsoft iirc.

Hmm, it looks like the number is used for directory assistance [0] in North America at least.

>Throughout North America, 1-XXX-555-1212 will connect to directory assistance for the specified XXX area code

I wasn't able to find a link between that number and TellMe/MS. They appear to have had the 1-800-555-TELL (8355) [1] number but no mention of the 1212 number.

Though a google for the number +"Microsoft" reveals they appear to use that number in a couple of their SQL server books [2]

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_%28telephone_number%29#Real...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tellme_Networks

[2] https://books.google.com/books?id=8OxGcCJViU4C&pg=PA68&lpg=P...

I must have been thinking of 8355.

> When I visit the hair cutting place, they refuse to serve you without a phone number

There is no way I'd not walk out the door and get my hair cut at one of the other 12 places within a 2 mile radius...

And that is the power of a competitive market.

What of services for which that isn't possible?

"... and we deliver our frozen products gratis to your door-steps ... " beep beep beep

How so? What is Standard General going to do to them?

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