I used this past weekend because I was sick of having random numbers in my contact list, but it seemed to be received rather well so I thought I'd post it here and see what the community thinks.

What I did: Instead of having a girl put her number in my contacts list or calling herself from my phone, I'd open the notepad app on my iphone, type her name in with a "-" next to it (Britney -) then give it to her tell her to type in her number. When she asked why she wasn't being added to the contacts, I'd say something like "you seem real cool, but I'm sick of waking up with people in my contacts that I end up not talking to. If we actually get to hang out again I'll let you in (smiling)."

Almost every time I could watch the girl become more attracted, a few asked for my number and called me the next day to set something up, one other brought me back to her place that night.

I'm still a little ambivalent about this because it makes getting a number a bigger deal then just having her call her phone from mine. I usually try to make things move with as little resistance as possible and this notepad move contradicts that ideal.

Let me know what you guys (and girls?) think.

Edit: Thanks for the input. I couldn't agree more with some of you (un1verse made some great points in particular) that this could backfire. If the girl was a bit insecure, she might blow you off completely to protect herself if she sees you starting to withdraw from the interaction. I actually did this originally because I was stuck in a conversation going nowhere so as I tried to close it and move on the girl suggested we exchange numbers so I just pulled out notepad and it completely changed the dynamic, things ended up going quite well after that.

Of course I might have just been reading things wrong, but who knows. If you use this in the field please come back and post your results. It would also be interesting to know if and how you changed it/personalized it to make it more/less subtle as well.