What's It Like to Have Elon Musk's Old Phone Number?

It’s an experience that plenty of people have had: you get a new phone number and you wind up getting calls for the last person who had that number. Sometimes it’s awkward; sometimes it’s hilarious. Usually it stops after a while. But what happens when your new phone number previously belonged to someone with more of a public presence? Someone who’s in the news a lot? Someone with a penchant for making over-the-top statements?

Well, that’s the situation Lyndsay Tucker has found herself in. She’s 25, an actress who works as a skin care consultant in California. She also has a phone number that previously belonged to Elon Musk. And while that might sound like the setup for a comedy abounding with wacky misunderstandings, it’s turned into a very surreal part of Tucker’s everyday life.

At NPR, Bobby Allyn explored the situation Tucker has found herself in. Allyn also mentions that he himself accidentally called Tucker once, when attempting to reach Musk for comment. According to the article, Tucker gets three calls or texts intended for Musk every day.

Some involve Musk’s forays into space exploration. Others are a little more urgent:

A South African businessman asked about buying 1,000 trucks. The Internal Revenue Service called about a complicated tax issue.

Adding to the surrealism even more: some of the people who reach Tucker do not believe her when she tells them that it’s no longer Musk’s number. All of which seems like an abundance of extra labor to have to deal with. Cellphones do an excellent job of bringing people together, but sometimes they can make life more complex in bizarre ways.

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