I’ve been a receptionist myself; I know it can be a difficult job. Especially in an office like this one, where a large proportion of callers are not native English speakers and have completely unpronounceable names. (I served my receptionist stint in an office like that, too; ever try getting a coherent message from a monolingual Polish speaker if you don’t speak Polish? It was all I could do to get callers to spell their names.)
However, my requirements are pretty basic: I want to know the caller’s first AND last names, and the company they’re calling from. This is especially important because the major account I work on, the second largest in the office, has several hundred pending cases at any one time. Many of these are Chinese and Indian nationals, and in their attempt not to have their co-workers butcher their names, they make up “American” names. So if you tell me Kevin is calling, chances are it’s not actually someone named Kevin, but some Chinese statistician named Li. (Just an example; all names have been changed to protect the guilty.)
If I’m going to have a meaningful conversation with Li, I need to know who he is in order to have any hope of knowing what’s going on with his case. Is he the Li who is married to another one of my employee’s clients and may have a simple question about how to get a driver’s license, or is he the Li who has authored 200 journal articles on neurological research? If he’s the latter, I may not have an hour right that second to answer his 57 hypotheticals on his green card application. Even if he’s the former, I may not have the time right that minute to explain the Byzantine Illinois bureaucratic system of obtaining driver’s licenses without a SS#. Or maybe he’s the Li who manages several of my other clients, and he needs to understand the requirements and process for getting them green cards? I have no bloody idea if you don’t give me his full name.
Really, I do need to know who is calling so I can manage my time. That’s why your job exists, after all. And since the name of my major client is also pronounced the same way as a woman’s name, if you call and give me that first name, it could be any one of several hundred people. You’ve been here almost a month now; I’d think it wouldn’t be difficult to figure out what the second-largest client in the office is, the one that produces hundreds of phone calls every week.
That is all. I feel like our reception function is rapidly becoming multilingual episode of Who’s on First.
So that’s where our old receptionist went!!! Dump her immediately!! :D, you’ll be glad you did.
When she was here (and we only got calls from people with american names and companies, she could barely be understood when she answered the phone with “Good Morning, this is ABC Environmental”.
Always sounded like she had a mouth full of marbles or something. That her???
Yeah, can you tell I’m a little burnt-out and need a vacation?
I usually don’t get so stressed about this stuff; if I weren’t so fried and crunched for time, I’d go up there and have a nice, calm conversation with her about the above, or bring it up with the office manager (the one who is supposed to be responsible for proper screening and training of administrative support staff). But hey, asking for callers’ full names ain’t exactly rocket science, especially after you’ve been repeatedly requested to do so. I managed it at the age of 19 without anyone even asking. In three languages, yet, one of which I didn’t speak.
(At that job we used to keep a list of a couple dozen emergency Polish phrases, spelled phonetically, posted next to the phone. Things like “please hold, I don’t speak Polish.” The fun part is that when you say this in Polish, even with a horrible American accent, nobody believes that you don’t speak Polish and then they go off at about 1,000 miles an hour in thick rural highlander dialect. Well, hey, at least that job was never boring.)
oh please have the office manager talk to her. I’ve been the “new receptionist” and I would have much rather had the office manager stress the particular preferences of Mr. High Strung, instead of having Mr. High Strung barge out to the front desk, yell in my face for 5 minutes, spit and all, and leave me crying. Lesson learned. NEVER made another mistake after that. But it could’ve been handled oh so much more calmly.
What youre asking, Eva Luna, is not rocket science, true, and I see your frustration. But you’d be surprised how many people get through life with only a fraction of common sense. I work with a large portion of them.
Break a curtin-rod across her throat. Load her into one of those white metal mini-dumpsters that they collect waste grease in. Call the teamsters and have them pick up the whole works and take her out to the forest somewhere where there will be a crew of lumberjacks waiting. The head lumberjack will pull her out of the grease pit by her hair, then grab a [ content deleted due to graphic nature ] rope burns on the backs of her knees. Then take her out for ice cream and a facial.
She’ll work out just fine after that.
How is Rap like Porn? Both are better with the sound turned off.
Guys, I don’t hate her, and I have no plans to scream at her. I just want her to do her job, which is difficult if she can’t seem to understand what her job consists of.
I’m just at wit’s end because I can’t deal with training her (I simply don’t have the time, and hey, that’s what our office manager is for, even if she’s compeltely useless at HR issues). I don’t want to see her fired, but on the other hand, I need to know what the hell is going on when people call me! or I look like a complete moron, which certainly isn’t good for the firm’s professional image.
Just explaine to her again what you just told us:
I understand what she could go through, hard job etc, but I managed.
It is important for us to know the full name of the client, because of {all the reasons you gave us, like the point that many have the same first name}
and say that if she can’t fully comprehend the requierments, then you might be forced to sart pushing for your firm to find another receptionist.
Our last one could never figure out how to file in reverse chronological order, regardless of how many times she was shown. This is a fairly important skill for an admin assistant, particularly when we are somewhat vulnerable to lawsuits.
Get rid of her before she really screws something up.
What’s documentation on this? Perhaps this office manager keeps telling her the important thing is to answer all calls as quickly as possible and keeps yelling at her when she puts people on hold while she’s trying to write down the full names of your clients. Maybe the gal across the hall from you keeps complaining because her clients have wait three rings for the phone to be answered and then they’re put on hold.
Why don’t you send your OP in a memo to the office manager, who is supposed to be handling this. Or dig up the original job requirements, shoot a mail to the office manager, and remind her that these requirements are not being met.
I’ve come to the sad-but-true conclusion that asking others to “just do their job” is entirely too high of a standard for them to follow.
I agree with the others posted here that you should bring it up to the Office Manager to fix the problem. If that doesn’t work, work your way up the corporate ladder until you find someone with the balls to either fix it or tell you why your requirement can’t be followed.
Make absolutely sure she knows that it’s okay to take however much time she needs to get the names right, that the caller won’t think she’s stupid or slow – or that if they do, so what?
She might be thinking that speed is more important.
Or she might be getting impatient vibes from repeat callers who are tired of spelling their names.
Does she have a list of frequent callers? I’ve done reception, and there are times when I wished for a vendor list, sort of a cheat sheet.
She could be super-sensitive about asking non-English-speakers to repeat and spell, like it’s not P.C.
