But according to the OP, it’s for 4500 workers. Could be a language issue, and the desired word was guests, I suppose.
Maybe he’s a quartermaster on the SS Enterprise.
Also, dropping dimes is another way of saying “getting many assists” in basketball.
Good rant. Your receptionists have nothing to fear from me.
Only if the receptionists involved agree… Easybreath watches out for sexual harassment. Since the waters around Norway aren’t exactly the Caribbean, I suggest not pissing him off.
Welcome aboard, Easybreath. I do hope you don’t have many reasons to open threads at the Pit, but you sure did a great job with this one 
From the ranks of ex-receptionists*, I thank you.
*For 3 months and while in college.
You know, that’s just generally good life policy. Not only for humanitarian reasons, but because, I mean, think about it for two seconds: if you want to get anything accomplished in an office or bureaucracy of any kind and size, YOU ARE THE RECEPTIONIST’S LITTLE BITCH. To say nothing of holy dread the SECRETARY. This is in the nature of things and must be accepted, and the proper homage paid.
People who abuse receptionists aren’t just assholes, they’re incredibly foolish.
matt_mcl is correct. For example, it’s currently taking me a grand total of 15 seconds a week to prevent some little wanker who was unspeakably rude to me last year from advancing his career as a corporate tax lawyer. I’m doing it with relish and satisfaction.
I find that being exceptionally polite to waitstaff, receptionists, secretaries and anyone else choosing to work in a service position pays large dividends. Being rude to that same group of people generally comes with a hefty drawback at some point. Plus, my mama raised me right.
And while we’re at it, PLEASE stop treating the receptionist like a lower-class citizen because she’s “just the receptionist”. We have brains. We do our job just as you do yours. We make your lives easier. Don’t screw around with us, because we can make your life a living hell just by not doing you any more favours.
Trust me.
Amen.
I’m a legal assistant - also a fully-paid up and admitted member of the bar of my state - but I make my living as a legal assistant. (This is for a staggering variety of reasons - none of which involve any deficiency in my ability to practice law.)
Sometimes I think if one more person treats me like I have the native intelligence of a house pet or possibly a potted plant because I’ve chosen to work in a support capacity, I’ll scream. The phrase “Oh, you’re just a secretary” makes my teeth hurt.
I do client billing, legal research, drafting, scheduling, I maintain the client files, contacts and court information, I schmooze clients, court personnel, IRS employees (my boss is a tax lawyer), I handle virtually all of my boss’ correspondence. I take his entire administrative load (and a senior partner at a large corporate firm has a lot of administrative load to take) - as well as a hefty chunk of his research and drafting. I’m a trained professional - and I’m absolutely magnificent at my chosen work. As are a goodly percentage of people in support capacities. And yet a staggering number of people treat me like a circa-1950’s secretary who sits around filing her nails and scheming to marry one of the bosses, for fuck’s sake.
It makes me want to beat them about the head and shoulders - preferably with a baseball bat.
If applicants to our academic programs are rude or demeaning to the secretaries in any way, they are not admitted.
Okay, put me down as another Doper who is definitely not gonna fuck with your receptionist, or any receptionist, or secretary, anywhere.
My very favorite version of the error in treating the people who originally serve you in any establishment was when a lady in front of me verbally abused a “salesman” in a medium sized music/art store. She then asked to speak to the manager. The sales guy says, “Jim, this lady wants to speak with you.”
The harridan rants at the manager for a few minutes. He supports the information given by the “salesperson” in every detail. He offers to give the lady her money back, but tells her that she cannot insist on disciplinary measures against a salesperson. She demands to speak to the owner. The manager says, “Ed, she wants to talk with you again.” The “Salesperson” returns, and pleasantly asks, “Yes, mam, I am the owner, can I help you?”
People laughed like it was theater, as the old bat huffed out trying to look like it was not an ignominious retreat.
Tris
I am not the receptionist, but sometimes when ours is out sick or something I will volunteer to help cover the front desk for a while. A few weeks ago I was doing this when a man came in to drop off a resume. I gave him some paperwork to fill out to go along with it, and while he sat in the lobby and filled it out he started to chit chat with me. This I didn’t mind, but as the conversation progressed further he started making comments about Mexicans, immigrants, etc. that went further and further over the line. I just sat and looked at him, but I could not believe that he was stupid enough to say things like that in public, let alone a professional office where he wants to get hired!
I took his resume in to the HR director and made sure to speak with her about his comments. Needless to say he didn’t get an interview.
I could go into rude callers too, especially grating are the ones who think you should know who they are without identifying themselves. Look, maybe the main receptionist can identify you by voice alone, but people cover for her sometimes and we get hundreds of calls a day. Identify yourself when you call! Or at least do so when asked, don’t play games like “what, you don’t know who this is?” Or, “I just called a half hour ago.” That’s nice. Someone else answered the phone this time, smartass. I don’t care enough to memorize your voice.
Sometimes I wonder how some people could have any professional credibility at all and act the way they do.
Actually, I haven’t provided enough information, but appreciate your kind assumption on our behalf
We manage a camp - the Ormen Lange Onshore Project - which, at completion, will supply over 20% of the UK’s gas supply for a long time. It’s currently under construction, due to be ready for testing 'round summer next year. Thus, we have a lot of workers (the choice of word was deliberate ;)) staying here, who have all their expences covered by their company.
A lot of these people are the dregs of the working force, and around half are foreign (swedish, polish, british, irish, turkish and spaniards, with some oddball Canadians around - and no correlation between that and the previous point, btw!). All in all we have had around 18’000 workers in a rotations. So, there are a lot of ‘old-timers’ (dubbed ‘grey hounds’) who may have worked for months or even years.
These people usually work here every day for two weeks, then go home for three weeks, and then comes back. The situation I described above was when a person who had worked for Aker came back after an 8-month hiatus, we hadn’t paid attention to the little comment in the reference field that said he craved a room with internet access. The order was actually placed between two and three days before his arrival (though we demand them at least five days before :mad: ) and, mind you, at each booking session we book between thirty and forty pages with fifty names each. Manually entering every name, worker number and arrival/departure dates into our database . . .
(Another thing to point out is that we don’t work like a real hotell; we work on very, very specific and limiting parametres from Hydro as to how the camp shall be managed. Can be a REAL pain, sometimes.)
Oh, also, I’m male, if there was any confusion. We’re as many men as women where I work
Almost forgot…
Sign me up for those cruise lines, right away!
Good on you! I’ve always suspected this kind of thing could happen, and I’m glad to hear it does. This is part of why I always drive very carefully in the parking lot and am very solicitous of pedestrians…what if that person I rev my engine at works in payroll??
You’re so much more clever than your brother. All that schoolin’ and he’s still not sure if he should fuck with receptionists.
You can’t stop rude sons-of-bitches from being rude sons-of-bitches. But is there anything you can do to make things better? Maybe having a senior person on call to handle tough cases and take the heat off the regular employees?
You’ve said it takes six months to train a new receptionist adequately. So every time one them gets fed up and quits your operation loses money. Often people in senior management don’t give a damn if some low-level employees are unhappy, but show them how it impacts the bottom line and they start to take notice.
Put together a plan to help these women. Come up with some system to insulate them from the worst of the abuse. Then pitch it to your boss as a cost-cutting measure.
For a good wage, I’ll wear a long dark black cloak (with crimson trim), wear a scary hairstyle, and carry two very sharp swords. And grin. A very large grin. At anyone who gets in your face. I’ll enjoy my work, you’ll enjoy your work.
Y’know, swords are less effective than guns. But they’re so much more fun.
I don’t want to spoil your exciting rant, but I do think Pochacco has a point here.
If you’re having this much turnover in this position, then your company is clearly not doing enough to support these employees.
Dealing with “abrasive assholes” is an inevitable part of this kind of job, and several of the people you mentioned clearly had experience in such positions. That these people quit anyway indicates that they are NOT getting the support they need to deal with this.
I’ve had jobs where I had to deal with such unpleasant people, but I was helped by knowing that my manager would back me up, and support my decisions. I’ve actually had my manager come out from his office and eject one from the office, saying “You can’t yell at my people like that! Get out of here, and don’t come back until you’ve calmed down enough to act civilized.” And this was an existing client, one we were legally required to serve.
Your company needs to change something, so that these employees feel supported enough to withstand the abusive customers. If nothing else, the economic cost of this excessive turnover ought to trigger some changes.
Reminds me of some survey work I was doing. Despite being entitled to walk over someone’s property to survey it and this survey work being of benefit to them, since they wanted to build on it or sell it for development, some land owners still managed to be complete pricks about the whole thing.
Basically we came upon a field to survey, the only house nearby occupied by people who knew nothing about it. My mate suggested we go ahead and survey anyway. Halfway through, the landowner passed by and asked what we were up to. Not having our ID badges ready yet, we explained and gave him a number to ring to speak to our boss about it. All politeness until he rang up and instead of asking for our boss by name, spent the next five minutes bollocking our receptionist, demanding to know why complete strangers were in his field :rolleyes: As a bonus, my mate (who was from a farming background) said to me that they’d probably turn on the electric fence as soon as they left. Sure enough, as we were leaving, we got a little click-click-click from the fence :dubious:
So yeah, fuck the cunt faced turds who take it out on receptionists everywhere
The same should be applied to anybody who is “just…”. I’m currently working in Internal Customer Support and every time my boss says “bah, that guy is just a (insert here job title without the word ‘manager’), ignore him”, I want to smack her over the border. The border between New Zealand and Australia, that is*. 90% of what I know about the stuff I’m supporting, I learned being a “weekend shift lab tech” - lower than that, the floor.
- Yes, I know that border is kind of wet. I’m in Spain, NZ is our antipodes.
It happens all the time. Mostly it comes in the form of not being as helpful as we can be. In my case, I’m mostly preventing this guy from transferring to my boss’ department (where he’d be one of a dozen associates instead of one of a hundred or so) by failing to work a meeting into my boss’ schedule. My boss is really quite busy. Also, his emails keep being accidentally deleted. It’s a mystery. (Actually, I’m actively blocking this guy - he was that offensive. However, I could be almost as effective at blocking him without actually taking any action whatsoever.)
Conversely, there was a young attorney who started at the same time as the wanker who was grossly offensive. She was very polite and quite friendly. Her bid to transfer into my boss’ department (with the perks that go along with being in a much smaller and less competitive pool) was successful.
Funny, that.
There’s a lot a person in a support position can do to help you that aren’t required of them in the competant and professional performance of their responsibilities. If you’re an asshole and treat me like a subhuman lackey, why in the hell would I go out of my way to help you out? Oh, that’s right! I wouldn’t.
It’s totally possible to be professional without going the extra mile for every person who crosses your path. I always, always do my job - but if someone can’t be bothered to display at least common courtesy, I don’t go out of my way to make their lives easier.