Good Morning, How Can I Help Your Phone Etiquette?

8 hours a day, 5 days a week, I sit at my desk and I answer a phone. 

Answering the phone was something I loathed at my last job because every time the phone rang it meant that I had to do something. It meant that I had to take a subscription, take an a

pparel order, take a dealer's ad corrections, or take a bitchy message due to fact that the president never would accept his calls because marthastewart.com was more important than the business he was running. 9 times out of 10, I was so far behind in the job that I was responsible for that I just flat out didn't have time to be dealing some half-wit farmer out of North Dakota whose magazine showed up in the mail missing the inside pages. Like, who gives a shit? Not me. 

Now, I answer the calls and immediately direct them to someone else. Which isn't so bad. None of the calls require me to do much of anything more than get them to the correct person they need to handle the business at hand. Remembering a building load of extensions was a pain in the ass, but I've always been good with numbers so it didn't take too long. They even supplied me with a dorky, yet practical headset that allows me to answer the phone when it rings without even having to move my ear over to the receiver. It's pretty awesome. 

As painless as that may seem, I still find myself very aggravated at 75% of the people who call me on a daily basis. I get all worked up like twice a day, I'm not even gonna lie. I have to call across the room at least once a day to vent to my receptionist wing-man...."Michele, what the hell is wrong with these people?!" And normally, I get out of her exactly what I'm after...which is a laugh, an understanding sigh, and some words of encouragement. You see, Michele did my job for years; she understands and is always there to support me. She swears that she was normal before she had my job...and she may very well be right...I kinda feel like I was normal once, too. But still, she pats me on the back, gets me back on the right track, and I go right back to answering the phone. 

Please understand that the fact that people call me constantly isn't exactly what gets me all twisted out of proportion. It's the general lack of manners of the people who are calling. They normally fall under one of three aggravating categories: rude, dumb or persistent.

It bothers me when I answer the phone and the caller is having a full-blown conversation with someone else that's in the room with them. I feel like if you are going to make a call, it's rude to not devote all of your attention to that call. When I answer the phone, I have a long drawn-out spiel that I have to put out there, and it throws me off when I answer the phone and someone is already talking. I will even sit there, and not say a word until the caller gets all weird and can't decide if I've answered or not. Because at that point, they shut up and listen. And when that finally happens I say, "Good Morning, how can I help you?"

I also get worked up when someone calls and asks me a dumb question. For example, I hear my boss's phone ringing in his office. It stops, immediately mine starts ringing. I see that it's an internal call, hmph. I answer, no spiel on these calls thankfully, internal calls only require a friendly hello. And then I hear, "....is the big man not in his office?" Well dummy, I don't know...didn't you just call in there? Did he answer? No? What do you reckon that means?  Or when I get a call like "...could you tell me if Donna is in her office?" Well dummy, I don't know....how about I put my x-ray glasses on and peer through the walls? Or better yet, let me call someone to come cover the front desk for me so that I can walk to her office and take a look. Come on now people, won't hurt you to think a little before you dial a number. 

My absolute FAVORITE aggravating caller is the one that just won't quit. Never fails, around noon every day, someone will call and ask for someone that is on their lunch break. I mean, we are all pretty much hard asses up in this place - but we still gotta eat. The first time they call, I will transfer them as requested and hope like hell they have sense enough to leave a message. Ha! Never happens. As expected, I end up having to suffer through a tedious routine...which involves at least three call backs to "try" other places this person may be hiding, and then a page overhead to try to locate them. When all that fails, I get the same line..."Well, I HAVE to talk to them." Okay genius, what else do you suppose that I can do? I'm practically chained to the front desk. I have to have someone come cover me so I can go take a leak...so what exactly do you suppose I do about the fact that someone across the building isn't answering the phone at the exact time that YOU need them to?  Instead of saying all that, I just ever so politely remind them that it's lunch time and suggest that they just leave a message and wait for a call back. I always get a huff and a puff, but then they agree. At that moment, I sit back and think about how that caller just ripped 10 minutes of my life away from me, and how it all could have been avoided if they would have just left a message the first time they called. This happens every, single, day. 

I've never been one that was real good at biting my tongue, its proven to be pretty painful for me actually. For the sake of keeping my job, I have no choice but to grin and bear down, maybe that is what makes my eye twitch. I have figured out that if I sit at my desk and make a smart-ass face while I listen to the nonsense on the other end of the line, it makes me feel quite a bit better...however, that tactic kinda freaks out the innocent people passing by. I'm fine with them thinking of me as the crazy receptionist girl because if it hasn't got me already, the "crazy receptionist plague" will inevitably catch up with me sooner or later. With that being said, don't be surprised if you call me one day and my spiel has changed. I feel like a good solid day of "Good morning, how can I help your phone etiquette?" may be very beneficial to the integrity of the general population.