Them: Hi, is <boss’s name> in today?
Me: I believe so, who’s calling?
Them: Is he in charge of printing supplies?
Me: Well, we manage that as a department. Where did you say you were calling from?
Them: Transfer me to <boss’s name>.
Me: Well, I can see if he’s available. Who’s calling?
Them: Dickbag solutions.
Me: Ok, and what is this in reference to?
Them: Just transfer me.
Me: Hold on, let me see if he’s available… he’s not at his desk right now, can I take a message?
Them: Can you page him?
Me: Um… no?
Them: Can you transfer me to someone who might know where he is?
Me: Uh…
Them: Just transfer me to someone who might know where he is.
Me: I can’t do that. We have no way of paging him.
Them: Fine. hangs up
There’s this one ****** who keeps calling my home multiple times a day. I told them the person they were trying to reach moved out. I am going to tell them she died next time they call. When they hear my voice picking up the phone they just hang up. Seriously, after 20 times can you JUST GIVE UP?
(Note this is not a creditor or something, probably people asking for campaign contributions or some BS cause it’s automated callers.)
I worked at a very small company for a couple of summers, so I’d often answer the phones. About 80% of the time it was some pushy person trying to sell office supplies.
Yeah, I’ve been in offices where vendors (and for some reason, printer supplies seem to be one of the worst) have called and asked to be connected to whoever is in charge of those items. When I ask who they are and they do that “just connect me to whoever is in charge” I sometimes just hang up, but then I realized that they will then keep calling any numbers they can find until they get someone who will connect them to the head of purchasing. So when I get the calls, I’ll tell them “Tell me who you are or your number will be automatically blocked by our phone system” or “I’m in charge, and we have a contract with a company for our supplies, so thanks and have a great day. Click.”
I am not 100% sure, but I am pretty sure it is that federal anti-telemarketing law that was a big deal a while ago. (Do not call list, etc.)
I used to telemarket cable (comcast) and they told us if we hung up on a customer, the company could be in a lawsuit and lose a lot of dough. So, we were told never to do this. (This was like 5-6 years ago)
I wish customer service would hang up on me. Seriously. The new trend is that after they help you, they must ask if there is anything else they can help with. I’ve tried to pre-empt them by saying that they have helped me with everything I need, but that doesn’t work. Poor robots. :(
I can shed some light on this from working at Comcast. They monitor our calls and we will receive a mark against us if we ever hang up on a customer unless the line goes dead. We either have to wait for the customer to hang up or have a valid excuse to the drop the call then email it to our supervisor.
About once a quarter I get this flowery, hand-written personal note from an office sales “business development” manager for Staples. Although I’ve never done business with them, its much more pleasant than the call described above…
I have a good one too. I had a vendor show up one day when I was taking a 1/2 day off. Apparently the vendor told someone at the door that we had a meeting, got shown in the office, found their way to my cube and camped out there for a while, finally getting my cell number from someone and calling me at home FROM MY OWN FUCKING DESK and telling me about his product and sorry he missed me in the office.
I was a bit livid at that. Not just at the sales guy either, the fact that nobody apparently cared a stranger was sitting at my desk.
Sales are tough right now, and companies are getting extremely pushy.
We used to get the ones that would call up claiming to be with our corporate office doing a survey on office equipment and would want a list of what machines you had. A few days later toner would show up with a invoice.
I got those at an old job on a fairly regular basis. That’s some pretty shady stuff. But one time I got a prank call from somebody using an Arnold Schwarzenegger sound board, starting with the questioning clips from True Lies. It was pretty awesome.
