Passive-Aggressive Telephony
We lost our company receptionist back in February. We had a sub-standard girl for barely a month but since then customer support (read me) have been taking over the receptionist role. This gives me a whole new range of ‘interesting’ phone calls, other than those provided by my clients, to experience. However, I have never dealt with a more infuriating call than this one.
Me: [Company Name], this is Riayn. How can I help you?
Lady: This is [name] from [company]. I want to talk to a manger.
Me: Can I say what it is regarding?
Lady: No, it is personal business.
Me: Well, we have quite a few managers here, so if you can tell me what it is regarding, I can put you through to the right person who can help you.
Lady: No, I said it was personal, now I want to speak to a manager.
Me: Can you at least tell me the department your query concerns?
Lady: No, now put me through to a manager.
I have a whole fucking floor full of managers. This lady’s English is not the best and the company she is from is a global company like ours, therefore it is possible that she needs the contact details of one of our five international offices, which are full of managers as well. But this lady will not give me any more information except that she needs to talk to a manager. So, I have just been transferring her to whichever manager I know is not at their desk. The sales manager is down talking to us when she calls so she goes through to his voicemail. Next time she calls she goes to the voicemail of my manager who is currently on leave. This shit has gone on for the past two days and today’s count of phone calls was five.
Trust me lady, I can keep up this passive aggressive shit as long as you can. Tell me what your call is about and I will put you through to the person who can help me. Treat me with disdain like I am too lowly for you to speak to and I will keep putting you through to people’s voicemail. Remember I have a whole floor of managers, so I got lots of people to choose from.
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May 16th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
I am SO relieved to know I’m not the only person who does that. Wicked, wicked Kelly… I don’t belong anywhere near a phone. Thank goodness I decided to be a geek.
May 17th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
ROFLMFAO
Excellent!
Jaynes last blog post..Too Splendid
May 17th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Kelly: I am a geek but still they decided to give me full access to the phone system. One day they will realise that this was a very bad thing to do.
May 18th, 2008 at 12:15 am
I remember in my early geek days when I was transitioning from the secretarial world to the geek world. The company I worked for put in a new phone system. At the time, it was bleeding edge and seriously complicated… at least 24 incoming lines. I had no interest in learning it, despite the high geek factor. After I cut the president, chairman of the board and several clients of this global organization off a few times, they decided maybe Kelly should just stick with her cables and computers. Wise choice!
My favorite passive aggressive thing to do was page people when they had a phone call instead of taking messages. Paging people was fun, writing up those little pink slips was not. (This was the days before voice mail. No, no… voice mail did not always exist.)
Kellys last blog post..Starbuck, Apollo, Athena
May 21st, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Oh that is so cool. I am in awe of your awesomeness!
May 22nd, 2008 at 6:16 am
Wandered over from 30-Something Bloggers. OMG can I relate. I am the receptionist. And I deal with some variation of this nonsense all the live long day. I love when people call & say “someone from this number just called me” (ummmm ok I have 40 people here, I am not going to ask every individual person here if they called you) or when they call for someone who is not employed here, I say so & they ask me if I am sure (ummm yes, quite).
Dawns last blog post..no freaking way
May 22nd, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Kelly: I used to love those old paging systems they had, where you would basically yell at people through the office. Voicemail has gotten rid of that enjoyment.
Nancy: Why, thank you.
Dawn: You have my deepest sympathies. I think receptionists get way too much shit to deal with from people outside their company and definitely from people within their company.