Gordy’s Pizza and Pasta in Port Angeles, Wash. got a lot of calls last Wednesday night, but it wasn’t for some Italian food. It turns out the calls from American Idol voters were being directed to the pizzeria.
For a total of two hours on Wednesday night, the pizza place received a fraction of the 71 million votes that were cast by viewers of the hit Fox series looking to vote for their favorite contestant, reports The Peninsula Daily News.
What makes it even stranger is that the phone number advertised on the show, 855-443-6411, is not at all similar to that of the pizzeria, the same number they’ve had for the past 50 years.
“Our phones were off the hook,” owner Randy Sexton said. “They were dealing with a frenzy of ring, ring, ring, ring, ring. The staff was answering every phone call as if it was a customer.”
According to Daily Mail, general manager of Telescope, Sandy Bennett, who is in charge of the show’s voting system, did not have any kind of explanation as to why the pizzeria was receiving the calls.
She suggested that Gordy’s block out-of-state-calls on nights that there will be voting for the show, but was unable to guarantee that it won’t happen again.
“I have three months of potential challenge if they don't figure out how to reroute or unroute calls in a different way,” he said.