Yeh, until your coworker thinks that he should be storing the phone numbers as an int in the database, and the ones in the Pacific northwest keep getting trunca

Yeh, until your coworker thinks that he should be storing the phone numbers as an int in the database, and the ones in the Pacific northwest keep getting truncated (but only if they include the leading 1). Numbers might be represented by numerals, but that doesn't mean every string of numerals is a number. If you need to know the difference, ask yourself if you'd ever do math with it, (add to it, subtract from it) if only principle.