Receptionists of the OKC Metro Area, Unite!
Because there are just a few of us here *cough*allthreefemales*cough* who have served time as receptionists (or still are), I thought I would share a few items from my list of “Thirteen Things People Assume About Receptionists.” Do chime in if you can relate.
We can make the person you called for 5 minutes ago, who we told you had just stepped out to lunch and would be back in an hour, appear magically out of a snag in our No nonsense® knee highs. And then a second time out of our tightly wound bun when you call again 10 minutes later.
We have all the answers at our fingertips. Most, but not all.
We were hired to be the eye-candy. I don’t know, this may be true.
We can control whether or not the person you want to speak with actually picks up the phone. Listen to me — if they don’t pick up the phone, they have let you go to voice mail. They do not want to talk to you right now. Please leave a message and they will get back to you as soon as…oh forget it. Whenever the boss walks by and they need to look busy.
The obvious exceptions would be the answers to:
1 - It gave me their voice mail. Well, where are they? (Shall I install a microchip in them so you can track which bathroom stall they can be reached in?)
2 - Someone from there called me. (No question, just use your mental telepathy to tell your phone to automatically dial their phone.)
3 - This is _____’s mother. May I speak to them please? (Your kid either doesn’t want you to know their personal extension or you also are guilty of using your caller ID as a redial button.)
4 - May I speak with Jeff Brown? (Of course you may speak with CEO Jerry Braun — in about a million years.)
But I also love the one where you answer the phone politely and the person dialing the wrong number on the other end begins to tirade against you because you keep leaving them messages and they want you to stop calling them. Either that or they want to where you left their socks, baby.
You are killing me. I laughed so hard I almost cried. I would like to believe that “eye candy women” do not usually accept non-eye candy pay, but then we all probably underestimate ourselves on more than one level. My personal belief is that we are hired because we are easily ignored or overlooked (but more skilled and educated than the boys will ever give us credit for). Add that to the skill of exceptional time management and being able to bring home the bacon but not the dough, and…
…thus, the time and desire to
rule the worldblog is at our fingertips.Just something to think about next time you want to be rude to a receptionist… Still waters run deep, my friend. Very deep.
Comment by Numenorean — August 21, 2008 @ 9:06 am