By Peter Berton

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – San Franciscans awakened by the noisy 5:30 a.m. start of the 10th annual Nike Women’s Marathon got more customer “service” than they bargained for when they called Nike to complain. Instead of a Nike rep advising “Just Do It,” the groggy complainants heard a sultry phone-sex operator asking how they wanted to be done.

The problem started when sleep-deprived residents called the city’s 311 line to voice their displeasure about loud outdoor announcements and music in Union Square. The callers were redirected to 1-800-RUN-NIKE, which city switchboard operators evidently believed was the sporting goods manufacturer’s customer hotline.

To put it bluntly, somebody goofed, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

“…[A] woman answered and suggested the caller might want to ‘unzip that fly, baby’,” Chronicle reporter C.W. Nevius wrote. “That number is a phone sex line. The actual Nike complaint line is 866-RUN-NIKE.

“It isn’t clear how the city got the wrong number, but when I called 311 [the day after the race], they were still giving out the number for the sex line,” Nevius added.

In fact, 1-800–RUN-NIKE belongs to National A-1 Advertising Inc., a Pennsylvania-based corporation that also owns HotMovies.com.

Despite a few red faces at city hall, the race concluded successfully with more than 30,000 participants “raising millions for cancer research,” the Chronicle reported.