Did you ever prank call the operator from a pay phone? What was your favorite prank?

Posted by ReadRightRed99@reddit | GenX | View on Reddit | 18 comments

I grew up in the 1980s and early 90s. Once I hit about 8 or 9, pay phone were not only a source of occasional income, they were entertainment when waiting for mom and dad at appointments, car dealerships, etc.

I remember dialing zero and singing “fish heads, fish heads, roley poley fish heads” to unsuspecting operators on the other end of the line, much to their dismay. I didn’t even know where the song was from. My older cousin used to sing it and I picked it up. I had a couple other go-to lines, including something about the “king of the wild schnausages.”

Pay phones were just the best. It was great when we discovered how to place collect calls and prank kids from school, tricking them into accepting calls. And let’s not even get me started on dialing 1-800-ooh-la-la to hear a lady’s voice encouraging us to provide our credit card number to start a hot conversation with a willing lady. I tried so many fake CC numbers and never got through.

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ToddPundley@reddit

My older brothers and their friends figured out the number for a pay phone they could see from their friends apartment.

For one prank they called it after a car parked by it. When the driver picked up the ringing phone they said “Hey this is the phone company. You can’t park there!” The driver apologized and moved the car in a panic.

Across the street was a park with multiple baseball fields so on Saturdays there’d be several little league games going on. One time they called and a random passerby picked up. My brother (doing a bad Jamaican accent for some reason) told the guy to go up to the little league coach setting up across the street and tell him “ANGELS CANNOT MAKE IT TODAY”. Then watched the guy get into an an argument with the coach.

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EntertainerNo4509@reddit

Best one was to take two phone booths that were next to each other and reverse the receivers and have the confused operators talk to each other for a little bit while we listened in. We were 10 or 11. 🙄

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CommunicationNew3745@reddit

The Operator? Not a chance - when we were kids, she was like Orwells unseen 'Big Brother'; always lurking in the shadows, ready to pounce if you tried any monkey business. One of my cousins, though, was a genius at prank calls, never having any fear of making one; she'd dial, deliver her spiel, then patiently wait for their response, never breaking a sweat or putting the receiver down until she was satisfied w/the results. I remember her grabbing the phone book one friday night when we were in middle school and finding the name of a lady in our town whose name was, unfortunately, Lucille Ball - at 1 AM she dialed up Mrs. Ball to ask her if 'Ricky' was at home or still out at 'the club'. I swear, she sat on the phone for 20 mins talking back and forth w/'Lucy' while we sat & watched (and laughed) in horror, just waiting for the cops to pull up and burst through the door.

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This_Fkn_Guy_@reddit

Yea id like to order a large anchovies pizza with extra fish.....9 year old me and my friends thought that was the funniest thing ever

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Purist1975@reddit

No but I did make them ring with 958 and the last four numbers and watch people answer it.

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this_kitty68@reddit

We figured out how to make pay phones ring on their own. I can’t remember how, but it was the way the people who serviced the phone checked to make sure the ringer worked. I think it was dialing certain numbers for the first three + the last four of that phone. We would hide and watch to see how long it took for some passerby to pick it up.

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AryuOcay@reddit

572 + last 4 digits

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SMACN@reddit

Yes! I can't remember the digits either, but you would dial them, play with the disconnect lever until the tone changed, and then hang up the phone which would immediately start ringing! We had payphones all over the school, and we would sometimes coordinate so that a bunch would start ringing all at once!

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ReadRightRed99@reddit (OP)

Oh that’s right! We did that too. And yes it was fun tricking passers by into picking up the dead line or making an entire wall of 5 or 6 pay phones all ring. I’ve also forgotten how we did that. But you look like a genius to your friends if they’ve never seen it done before.

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tanhauser_gates_@reddit

Used tone generators on pay phones and would drop in lots of money and then get connected to cruise ships and ask for Mr. Smith - there was always one.

Hilarity would ensue - for us at least.

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inky-doo@reddit

my favorite prank was using a series of chirps from a greeting card to make free pay phone calls.

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Mattica142@reddit

Not a prank, but me and my friends all had the number to the pay phone at our local mall, and would plan a time to connect where we’d call to figure out a plan to meet up or what we were doing that night and avoid those of us at the phone having to pay. Ah, the days before cell phones.

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MaximumJones@reddit

Collect calm from "Momit'stimetopickmeup".

Will you accept the charges?

Click

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funkympc@reddit

I dont understand why people did this. I would call the operator and tell them I got disconnected mid-conversation and ask them to reconnect me to xxx-xxxx. 90% of the time it worked everytime. You could get the operator to do lots of things if you knew what to say and had a basic understanding of how the local bell operated.

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ReadRightRed99@reddit (OP)

Sure. All the 10 year olds knew “how their local bell operates.” It never once occurred to me to lie to an operator to get a free call. We definitely used the collectable call voice message system though.

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New grandma: Who was that?

New grandpa: Bob. They had a baby. It’s a boy.