When the Smartfella? was still in the working world, he became aware of a modern day phenomena whereby the people who were working around me had developed a habit of sitting at their desks and letting the phones on their desks ring until the voice mail system picked up.
They did not think that there was anything wrong with this technique. When it first started happening, I said something about their ringing phone, they would sometimes look annoyed and tell me something like, “I’m busy”.
I quickly realized that I was “old school” and I backed off. The thing I had difficulty getting my mind around was that they did not look busy. That is, unless you are willing to accept playing solitaire as a part of your definition of “busy”.
Now that I have been in retirement all these years it seems that there is less and less opportunity to talk to humans out there. Actually it has gotten worse than simply, “Let it go to voice mail”. Allow me to give you a recent example…
§ Called and got into a voice mail message that told me the person who’s recording I was listening to was out until the following Monday.
§ His slick message told me to call another person who would help me and he even gave me the other person’s number.
§ I called the other person.
§ She was out of the office till Tuesday and her message told me to call the person whose message had told me to call her.
Now am I just being an old geezer about this or is there a real problem out there?
Would I kid u?
5 comments:
So what wrong with that? My phone is for my convenience, not all those "unknown" callers. When I hear the message I decide if I am "available". So give me a call Smartfella? and you'll see, or hear.
If only cell phone users WOULD let it go to voicemail, rather than picking up in mid-conversation with an actual person!
The fact that you use the phrase "old school" shows that you are more with it that you let on!!
The last 25 years of my engineering career were spent as a sales engineer. This profession required that I contact design engineers and purchasing agents. They were NEVER at their desk according to the messages. Away every hour of every day? No way, Jose! I gave up and retired.
I called Circuit City and got the standard message that all sales personnel were busy helping other customers. After two hours of calling, I decided to visit the store. I counted 15 sales people talking to each other here and there. I assumed they were selling to each other. Circuit City went outta business, didn't they? Are you listening, Fry's?
This is Smartfella? expanding on Anonymous' comment....
I once held on the phone for tech support help for about thirty minutes. The whole time I held I kept hearing the recorded message over and over about every sixty seconds, "All of our agents are helping other customers". When the rep finally picked up, I said, "Boy are you guys hard to get through to". She quickly shot back, "I'm the only one here today!".
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