The office phone rang. I am the office manager of a very small firm, only 5 employees, and only three of us are here today. We have an automated system, you know one of those "Thank you for calling, if you know your party's extension..." Well, if you press 0 for the operator it rings at my desk because I'm the one that's always here-- everyone else travels as a part of their job. We're a very team-oriented environment though; everyone has a role, and the other roles would fail if one of us didn't exist. We're egalitarian and we all recognize each other's worth and value to the organization as a whole.
But anyway. The phone rang, I picked it up. "Hi, this is me with my company." "Hi, this is Randall with somethingsomething Maps calling about getting you involved in our service." I said "Oh, I'm sorry, we're not interested. Thank you! Bye." And I hung up, because we get a lot of telemarketer calls, or we used to before we got this new phone system, and if you keep them on the line they'll keep talking. Plus since all of our clients are out of state, we don't need to advertise locally, which is what most of them want from us.
Two seconds later the phone rings again. Here's the way this conversation went.
me: "Hi, this is me with my company."
Randall: "I just want you to know that I think it's very rude to hang up on someone like that."
me: "I'm sorry but this is a place of business and I don't have time to talk to telemarketers"
R: "I'm not a telemarketer. I'm a city official."
me: "Oh, well I'm sorry. How can I help you?"
R: "Are you in charge of advertising? You're not in charge of anything. You shouldn't make the decision about who gets to talk to who ever is in charge."
me: "Excuse me, but you don't know what I'm in charge of. I'm the Office Manager."
R: "Well obviously you're not in charge of anything because you answer the phones. I will never let your company advertise with us at all."
me: "Excuse me??"
R: "This might be rude to say, but you just need to learn your place."
me: "Learn my place? What do you mean, learn my place?"
R: "You just answer the phones, you're not in charge of anything so you shouldn't act like you are."
me: "This might be rude, but I'm hanging up again." Slam.
Know my place. What the hell. Is this someone's idea of a joke? And if it is, they have a terrible sense of humor. How is ruining someone's afternoon a joke? Damn thing came up unknown on the caller id too. They haven't called back, so maybe this asshole was for real. I wish I had caught the name of his company or something. But why is a "city official" wanting us to advertise our company in a map something-or-other?
Why do people do that? I can't stand when people are rude to waiters or sales clerks or secretaries. They lead such unappreciated, underpaid lives. I can't even be mean to telemarketers-- yes, I hung up, but I said thank you and bye. I am by no means a secretary, not that there's anything even wrong with that, but I manage this office from top to bottom, and it wouldn't function without me. But I get confused with "just a phone answering girl" so often it's starting to get under my skin. Which leads me to believe that I knew the person who called, but none of my friends or my husband's friends know the work number. We have a few clients who might try to pull this, but I doubt it, and I think they would have called back right away to yell that annoying "April Fool's!"
So, yay, I get to annoy myself thinking about this all night because I've never been one to just let it go. I hate not knowing an answer, and I want to know who this idiot was so I can call him up at his place of work and harass him too.
What a bum. It definitely sounds like April Fool's fishiness to me, and you didn't deserve it.
ReplyDeleteDon't you just hate that condescending attitude? We had a business in MN and I was usually the one to handle collecting the money on past due accounts, one incident sticks out in my mind when I was told that I was just a billing clerk (clerk wasn't the "c" word he used) and that he was a close personal friend of the owner. He told me he would have me fired! I asked his name again, then said, "Gee, I can't seem to place you; I don't recall having met you. I will transfer you to Drew now." He used the "c" word again in reference to me while talking to his close personal friend, my husband. I listened with satisfaction as Drew told him we would be sending his last shipment COD for the full amount due and to never send any repairs to our shop again. A pause, then I hear my husband say that "c" billing clerk is my wife before he hung up. It was soooo satisfying!
ReplyDeleteDoes sound like an April Fool, but from someone who doesn't know you. He maybe just picked on you at random, but that doesn't make it any better. I loathe practical jokes, fine with wit and humour, but not prat falls.
ReplyDeleteIt might be a "joke" - in which case you'll hear about it later, I suppose. Or it might have been for real - in which case you're allowing that person to really ruin your day. Don't give him that power. He's a jerk. He approached a relative stranger and made assumptions about you, what you do, how you behave - all based on his intrusive phone which you didn't invite. I'd not give him another thought. He doesn't deserve your worry any more than you deserved his tirade.
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