[dlg]

In 1999, Brown University which had only used 863- added the 867- exchange. A suite of students got 5309 and kept getting calls asking for “Jenny” at all hours. They stopped assigning that number.

Ultimately a Rhode Island plumbing co, Gem Plumbing, bought it from Brown and used it in their ads.

[blahedo]

I came here to post this and should have known someone would beat me to it---I'll just add for others' reference that the suite already had 5309, under the 863 prefix, and when they split the campus all the dorms got switched to 867 en masse, so nobody making decisions ever had to look at the number "867-5309" and think about what would happen. Oops...

(PS hi dlg! dpb here)