Wednesday, July 22, 2009

This is why I'm not a receptionist...

Since we were short-staffed at work today, I helped out by answering the phone. About my third call in, I got a call from a guy who, as soon as I answered with the name of my company, told me his name was Jim, said where he was calling from and added that someone had requested some information about debt consolidation.

I began to ask him for the name of who called his company so I could direct his call accordingly, but he started talking again. So I waited patiently but realized he was giving me the sales spiel intended for someone else. So I politely tried to interject. And he kept talking.

So I waited, figuring perhaps he was required to give a short speech at the beginning of the call. And when he paused, I again started to interject to tell him he was calling a business and I wasn’t the correct person to speak to. And he started talking over me!

So then I was angry. “Sir? Sir? This is a business. Sir? Sir!”

I paused, thinking perhaps the phone had cut out and he couldn’t hear me despite me still being able to hear him. When he paused again, I shouted, “Sir!” And that’s when he continued with, “To speak to someone about his offer, press 1.”

Well played, robot, well played. You got me this time. Damn those companies with their recorded phone calls!

8 comments:

Alyssa said...

WHOA!! i havent heard of those before... This teaches you to just hang up on everyone that is irritating :)

sj said...

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

did you hear me laughing all the way in bristol? because i laughed HARD.

we get these all the time at work - the robot cold callers. usually it's about auto warranties.

awesome. they *got* you.

hey- remember when i used to blog too? oh yeah. good times. i promise i'll do that again. maybe tomorrow?

Gucci Mama said...

Priceless. I'll be laughing about this throughout the day, thank you.

Srg said...

Well now I don't feel so dumb cause I swear this exact thing happened to me the other day too! When I discovered it was just an automated message I slammed the phone down so hard my hand hurt. LOL

Technology can be so cruel sometimes!

Nickie. said...

HAHAHA. the first couple of times I did that. Now, I know to just hang up. =) Most times I even hang up on the people that do talk, about yellow pages. I'm like hi, we are all set, stop calling! They don't though. They never dooo. lol.

Soda and Candy said...

Hahaha, gold. I used to get ones at my old work that were like "Hi, I'm Jerry from Dish." I ended up every time shouting "Eff you Jerry!" and slamming the phone down.

Anonymous said...

As an assistant, I dealt with this B.S. all the time. Thank God I moved away from that job because I was about 3 phone calls away jumping out the 9th story window.

Pollyanna said...

Too funny!

I've done this with my voicemail! In the two seconds between logging in to voicemail and the first message coming on, I had forgotten that I logged into my voicemail. I too was trying to interject something and couldn't get a word in edgewise. I felt like such a dork!