Don't Call Me And Say "Who's This?"

The BBQ Pit
81

So many of you have touched on my big pet peeves here!!! PHONES!

I work swing shift in a large office with maybe 30 - 40 phone lines. Being the only one there in the evenings, I answer all the calls on all those lines from only one phone (thanks to the magic of centrex!) So I have the added bonus of not knowing what number the call actually came in on. I’m in an internal department of a large company, only calls I should get are from other departments.

I answer the calls with the name of my office, not my own name With a long french name, I won’t answer the phone with it, which would then require spelling it out a minimum of two times, and an explanation of how I got it (uhhh, my parents gave it to me?).

#1 phone pet peeve:
“This is the Westside Office, may I help you?”
“Who’s this?”
“This is the Westside Office, who’s THIS?”
(with the huge amount of wrong numbers I get, I ain’t going through the name thing for just anybody).
“I asked you first”
(my teeth start grinding about here)
“You must have the wrong number since you apparently aren’t calling for the Westside office, good bye”

I really get this. A lot. Almost daily Aways different people since repeat callers don’t try it twice on me. I just won’t play that game. And I’ve actually gotten in trouble for it too since sometimes it’s calls i’m supposed to get. Oh darn.

2a) “You paged me”
“I’ve paged no one, and I’m the only one here”
“Yes you did, it’s on the pager”

2b) “You just called me, it says so on my Caller ID”
“I’m sorry, but I haven’t called you or anyone else recently”
“Yes you had to, so stop it”

Ummmm, no one’s ever heard of misdialing?

3a) “May I talk to Amy?”
“I’m sorry, but there’s no one here by that name”
“What number did I reach”
“To tell you the truth, the phone system here pretty convoluted, I honestly don’t know” (and I wouldn’t give it to you anyway since it’s obviously wrong). What number were you trying to dial?
“Fuck you”

Lovely. This happens a lot. I get cussed out for their bad dialing.

But the topper wrong number - happened right after Sept 11:

3b) May I talk to Lisa?"
“There’s no one here by that name”
“Yes she’s there, she’s my wife. Put her on the phone NOW”
“I’m really sorry, but you’ve reached a wrong number”
“What’s your fucking problem? Aren’t you an American Citizen?? Get my wife on the phone NOW”

I guess only American Citizens can make his wife come and answer wrong numbers. Poor woman. And I’m REAL glad I didn’t give out my “feriner” name to this fool.

  1. “This is the Times, we want to send you a complimenary copy of our paper”
    Another line rings while I’m still on this call
    “This is the Times, we want to send you a complimenary copy of our paper”
    20 seconds later, another line rings…

I had the newspaper telemarketers stacked 4 deep tonight!

Phones: wonderful invention, aren’t they!

82

“Well, considering you’ve reached an office in Montreal, Quebec…”

I would have said this even if I were in the States, just to fuck with him.

83

I love when people leave weird ass messages on my machine, indicating that they don’t know how to listen to the greeting which says, “Hi, this is sturmhauke and available light, please leave a message and we’ll get back to you.” For example:

“Hey Janice [not a name mentioned on the greeting, or anyone I know], this is your boss. You’ve been out of work for the past week. If you don’t call me back today you’re fired.” Hey boss, there’s no Janice here. You’ve left multiple messages here, and she’s still not here. She will never be here, I don’t know who the hell this woman is. If you find her, tell her to stop pulling random numbers out of her ass.

“Hi, this is George, I’m not gonna make it in today, I have the flu. See you tomorrow.” Hi George, do I sound like your boss? Do I even sound like a place of business? No? Piss off then.

“Hello Mr. Lawyer, this is Bill, your client. You said you were gonna fax me those contracts to sign, but I haven’t got them yet.” Goddamn Bill, if you can’t tell me apart from your lawyer you deserve to get fucked on those contracts. My wife’s a lawyer but she’s sure not yours. Idiot.

“Yo baby, this is Willie Willis! You gave me yo number at the grocery store the other day! I’m a call you later baby!” Uhhh… whatchu talkin’ about Willis? Yes, that was the name he left on my machine. No, my wife did not give this dude our number.

84

You’re missing a golden opportunity to screw with people. Just start answering your phone, “Canadian Tire, may I help you?”

“Yes, do you carry Dunlop A60 tires?”
“Why yes we do.”
“How much are they?”
“Well, we’re having a special right now. If you bring in 6 bar codes cut from 12-packs of Coca Cola, they’re 3 tires for $19.95.”
“But I need 4 tires”
“Oh, well the 4th one costs 600 dollars.”

or something like that.

85

Ohhhh, I like that. I’m in the States, though not native born. I grew up here and have no french accent. I SHOULD have started babbling something, anything, in french: “Votre femme n’est pas avec la plume de ma tante” or some such nonsense. Would have probably ended the call quicker as he would have probably hung up in a fit of massive paranoia instead of screaming at me.

I always think of better reponses AFTER the fact, sheesh!

I can’t wait to try the “it’s MEEEE” bit, when the fools growl out “who’s this”. After all, I’ve been the sole person in this office during these hours for the past 15 years, who else could it be?

86

Just to be obnoxious, I put dogs on my machine. Dogs barking a few bars of Mozart to be specific, no human words at all. Anyone who knows me will know they got the right number. I get some of the BEST reactions from wrong numbers - people ROTFL, barking back, sometimes even singing back to it. “I’m sure I got a wrong number, but I love this…” It’s great. Though I had one woman get a bit upset a couple days ago that her kid might put something like that on his/her machine "This is your mother, that’s not nice at all…this is your MOTHER! ". My real mom got a good laugh when I played the message for her.

87

Another one. At my previous job, my phone number was one digit off from a local travel agency.

Me: “EvilBastards Bank, Coldfire speaking, good afternoon.”
Them: “Is this Dumbass Travel?”
Me: “No, this is EvilBastards Bank. You must have dialed the wrong number.”
Them: “I was calling about that special you had on holidays to Greece.”
Me: “This. Is. Evil. Bastards. Bank. You need to hang up, and dial the right number.”
Them: “But it’s the same number right here, in the newspaper ad.”
Me: “That may very well be, but it’s obviously not the right number.”
Them: “I don’t believe you. You’re Dumbass Travel.”
Me: <click>

15 seconds later. the phone rings.

Me: “EvilBastards Bank, Coldfire speaking, good afternoon.”
Them: “OK, about that trip to Greece. Does the hotel have a pool?”
Me: “I told you, this is NOT Dumbass Travel! Why can’t you understand that simple notion?”
Them: “I don’t like being spoken to like this. I demand you let me speak to your boss.”
Me: “Sure thing. Hang on. [sub][sup]Shithead.[/sup][/sub]”

My boss, who’s sitting across from me, has been listening with amusement so far. I connect the call to him, and he fires up his speakerphone.

Boss: “EvilBastards Bank, Leo McBoss speaking.”
Them: “Your employee was quite rude to me when I enquired about your special on holidays to Greece.”
Boss: “That’s because we don’t have any specials on holidays to Greece. We’re a bank, and he’s told you as much. You need to dial the right number.”
Them: “The number’s right here in the add. Are you saying you would misprint your own phone number? How stupid is that?”
Boss: “Pretty fucking stupid, I fully agree. Of course, it wasn’t US misprinting it, it was Dumbass Travel.”
Them: “Are you stupid? You’re name’s right here in the add, with the number! I demand to be served, right fucking now!”
Boss: <sighs> “Sure, let me put you through to my agent.”

Boss puts the call back to me.

Me: “Yes sir, how can I help you? Traveling to Greece, are we?”
Them: “Yes, with the entire family. I need 5 tickets.”
Me: “Excellent choice, sir. Greece is lovely this time of year. When would you like to travel?”
Them: “We would like to leave on June 8th, and return on June 24th.”
Me: <random keyboard clicking> “My, what a coincidence! I can get the last 5 seats on the first Souflaki Airlines flight to Athens on June 8th for you.”
Them: “Great! I’ll take those.”
Me: “They’re an electronic ticket, so you won’t be sent any tickets in the mail. You just need to present yourself to the Souflaki Airlines desk with your passports. The flight leaves at 7:30, but we advise you to report to the check-in desk at least an hour and a half in advance.”
Them: “Will do. Thanks for your help, even though I still don’t appreciate your dumb joke about the phone number.”
Me: “Glad to be of service sir! Enjoy your holiday, and thank you for calling EvilBastards Bank.”
Them: “Uh, huh? Yeah. Thanks. Bye.”
Me: “Bye now!”

Click.

Now, I wonder if that fucking moron ever found out one of the following things: [ul][]The phone number was indeed misprinted.[]EvilBastards Bank is not the same company as Dumbass Travel.[]Souflaki is a Greek dish, not a Greek airline.[]You can’t book a plane ticket without stating 1) your name, 2) your passport number, and 3) a means of payment.[/ul]But I sure as hell hope his dumb ass showed up at Schiphol at 6 AM on June 8th. :smiley:

88

To clarify: we got calls like this frequently (as my phone number was just one digit off from Dumbass Travel’s), but this one week, Dumbass Travel did indeed misprint their phone number, so it ended up as mine. Most people accept “it’s the wrong number, grab a phone book”. Not this idiot, though.

89

Arrrgggh! This is one of my biggest pet peeves!!! Except it’s not a friend with a six year old talking faintly in the background, it’s co-workers or clients and they’re loudly discussing some on-site issue with someone else while I’m saying “good morning ABC Company…(loud discussion about site in my ear with someone in the background)…Hello???..Helloo???.. click”.

Half the time it’s my darn Boss.

Him: “hey, why’d you hang up on me”???

Me:“Ummm, because I’m trying to do actual BILLABLE work, and didn’t feel like waiting for you to conclude whatever you were blabbing on about”???

(and yes, we actually talk to our boss this way, and he ribs us right back,DANG I’m gonna miss good ole casual workplace environments when I leave here).

90

Amen on this one too. These I truly do not get. Do the people who call an answering machine go into some sort of suspended animation mode until the beep or something?

My favorite one (wish I’d have saved it, and wish I could remember the whole thing it was a classic), and our answering machine identified our whole family by name (wasn’t single then), went something like this:

Machine: beeeeeep
Caller (VERY nasty, angry, self-righteous tone): HellOOO. Your CAT is on our FENCE again. You’d better get him OFF, or we’re calling the POLICE. This had BETTER not HAPPEN anymore, we MEAN it this TIME.
Machine: beeeeeep

What is funny is that we lived in a very remote area, only one neighbor, and we were good friends with them, and neither of us had a cat OR a fence.

I mean, you’d think if a person was that angry about something they would have paid attention and made sure their message got to the right people.

91

I just ask, “Who’s this?” back at them and if they don’t answer properly, then I hang up.

92

One of my lines had the same problem, one digit off from a travel agency. We got so many calls for them, we kept their number in the rolodexes. The problem probably started something like this:

Coworker: “Westside office…”
Caller: “I need your fax number”
Coworker: it’s 123-4567."

And for YEARS after we got travel deals on our fax. Tons of them. Some were good deals and our employees did use them. But it was literally 90% of our faxes, using up too much expensive thermal paper, and we had to eventually get a new fax number.

So, there’s an inverse consequence of a caller not asking (politely or otherwise) who they called to begin with.

I also get a lot of wrong numbers for an opthomologist. All elderly sounding people too. They have a good excuse I guess - eye problems - and they are always nice at least. So I keep that doc’s number in my rolodex for them too.

93

Coldie, I take back what I said about the Dutch being smarter than us.:slight_smile:

What I always wonder is – how do people that stupid live? I mean seriously – how do they cut their meat without killing themselves?

94

It’s like those caller ID assholes.

<ring>
Me: A hoy a hoy?
Them: YEAH SOMEBODY JUST CALLED HERE!!!
Me: Um…I didn’t.
Them: SOMEONE CALLED FROM THERE!!!
Me: **WELL MAYBE SOMEONE DIALED THE WRONG FUCKING NUMBER, DID YOU EVER THINK OF THAT? DO YOU CALL EVERY RANDOM NUMBER ON YOUR STUPID LITTLE CALLER ID DEMANDING TO KNOW WHO CALLED? **<hangup>

95

If I don’t recognize the number I don’t answer. When they start talking on the machine I’ll answer it. (If I want to talk to said friend / family member, of course. ;))

96

I recently starting working for a cellular provider, as a perk of the new job I was given a phone. The one I was given had belonged to a former employee ( a single former employee, who liked to party). The first night I had this phone I recieved several walkie talkie calls from various men. Needless to say this caused a lot! of problems with my husband. Every time I asked the caller who they were calling they got nasty and demanded to know who I was. The perfect response (I think) is to tell them You are the owner(bill payer) for the phone they have called and if they want to know who they are talking to they need to identify themselves first.

97

This is one of the common prank phone calls. The other one is as follows:
Caller: Your cow is in my garden.
You: I don’t have a cow.
Caller: I don’t have a garden.

Hilarity ensues.

I get some of the “who this?” phone calls a few times a month. The grammar is usually about the same. Ie, Who dis? or Who this? I once asked them if they knew how to conjugate the verb to be and if they put it into a the sentance I may be inclined to answer. I got a big “FUCK YOU” out of that one.

Typically, I tell them if you don’t recognize my voice you have the wrong number. I don’t like giving out any personal information over the phone.

There is someone that has a similar name to me who doesn’t pay his bills. Every once in a while I get phone calls from various collection agents. It has gotten to a point now (I got a call from one of them at 8 am this morning about an hour before I got up for work) and told them groggily, you have me on This street, you want the one on That street with the real names plugged into this and that street. They apologize and the calls stop for about a month.

98

Boy, those must have been some people with boring sad lives to prank call an answering machine! :smiley: