Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Grrr

You know what I hate? People who waste my valuable time (Ok, so I'm doing laundry and watching Season 2 of NCIS but hey it's valuable to me!) calling me, and either hanging up or failing to leave a proper message.

I'm all about short sweet and to the point on phone calls, in general. There are a few people that I will BS with on the phone for hours on end, but usually if you're leaving me a message, just get to the point. I hate it when the gist of it is in the beginning, because my cell carrier forces me to wait until the message has played through entirely to delete the message, and if I hang up in the middle of it, it's just waiting for me the next time.

Last week I got a couple of hang ups, of the no-talking-when-I-say-hello variety. Three to five seconds of silence on the other end, and then click.

Aggravating.

Today, I was away from my cell phone, and got a Very Important call. At least according to the message the guy left. Unfortunately his phone etiquette is so poor that he garbled his extension number, so I have no way of calling him back, nor did he say what company he was calling from, nor what the call is regarding.

I could call the number back, he did get that much out clearly, and ask for a Mr. David Nolastname, and hope to find the man who wanted so desperately to reach me... but why??

Why should I go to that much trouble when I don't even know if I want to talk to this dude? Let alone when he failed so utterly to make himself clear, inform me of what the phone call was regarding (other than it being Very Important.. he stressed that part.. three times...) or in general create a positive phone presence that would make me want to speak to him.

I did attempt a reverse lookup, but since it was an 866 number, only one site I tried claims to have any information, and they want money for it.

I would like to discuss his failure in giving good phone, but I don't care about it that much. If it is truly as Very Important as he claimed, he will call back. Or more likely, someone else from the telemarketing call center, really.

There's a fine line between being discrete and making me suspect that you're trying to lure me into calling you back so you can try to sell me siding.

Make me believe that I want to talk to you, at least. That way, if you try to sell me siding, I'll at least congratulate you on your methods before I give the standard three no's, tell you to take me off of your calling list, and hang up.

And if it is actually important, well, I'll make that decision.

The phone is for my convenience, not anyone else's.


Now I'm grumpy. Dangit.



Edited to add: Also, cases of mistaken identity in text messages. I've been called a bitch twice, by the same person. The more I think on it, the more grumpy I get. Is it just my day for phone related grumpy makers???

7 comments:

Keith said...

I get about two calls a day that make me want to try qualifying for Olympic phone chunking. If I didn't need the thing for work I'd get rid of it.

Old NFO said...

I'll just email... LOTs safer... :-)

FarmGirl said...

I swear I wanted to shoot the damn thing today. Finally turned it off, which, considering the amount of time I've spent with that phone glued to me in case of familial emergencies, might as well be against the law as far as I'm concerned.

I just had enough of the stupid crap today.

Texas Ghostrider said...

1-866 = TELEMARKETERS yes it is important to them but not me...delete.

Dan O. said...

Just enter the number in Google. there are sites out there that the number will come up on and people will note that they got calls from the same number. There's usually somebody who will know the origin. Most of the time it's some magazine subscription or business scam of some sort.

OrangeNeckInNY said...

If Mr. David NoLastName didn't leave any details as to why the phone call was important, then it wasn't important. Also, if he didn't follow up with a second phone call a half-hour later, then that tells you it wasn't important at all. Well, that's been my experience dealing with people over the phone, when I used to have a real job. :P

Anonymous said...

Try hitting the 7 twice to erase the message while it's playing.