My Life at the Answering Service
This is another rabid rant about work. If you're feeling fluffy today, don't read it! If you want to share in a festive bit of misanthropy, please do continue.
So here I am at my 2nd job at an answering service for doctors, locksmiths, plumbers, etc.
I used to work both Saturday and Sunday here but that changed a couple of months ago. Now I pull a 12 hour stint on Saturday and have Sunday to recover from the horror of the human condition.
I talk to morons on the weekend. Unlike my full-time job where I must deal with 'educated' idiots, at the answering service I'm exposed to the intellectual bottom feeders every few seconds.
Here are some fine examples.
**A caller on an OB/GYN line had her tubes tied the day before and wanted to know if she could eat solid food today. Obviously the doctor had mysteriously rerouted her small intestine through her fallopian tubes during the procedure...
My only comfort is that the doctor has taken her out of the breeding game.
**A caller on the local Catholic church line wanted the father to pray for a man in the hospital. She refused to give her name or number and didn't have the man's hospital room number. A couple of hours later, my coworker received a second call from someone else regarding the same man. She informed us that the man had been admitted with a gunshot wound. Could it be that the first caller was the the shooter? Makes one wonder..
**A caller on the locksmith line needed the locksmith to come unlock her car. "Where is your car, ma'am?" I ask, needing her address or business name where the car is located. "Oh, it's in my driveway." Great, lady. I'll just drag out my crystal ball and scry your exact location. No wonder you locked your dumb ass out of your car. You shouldn't even have a license.
**A caller on the Housing System line called with a stopped up pipe. "I tried to do a warshin' and couldn't." I asked her if she had a back-up problem. "No." I asked her if she had a leak. "No." I asked her what exactly it was doing. "Nuttin'"
I gave up and paged the on-call service man.
**A caller on a local HVAC line needed help installing his washer. Excuse me, but the last time I checked HVAC was for heating and cooling. That said,Mister, unless your washer is a washer/air conditioner combo, I believe you just qualified yourself for the Idiot of the Year award.
**Another caller on the OB/GYN line. She called saying she'd been in pain and having contractions since Wednesday! So you decide to wait until the office closed and then call.... Smart! OH, I get it...you're aiming for a Guinness world record in longest labour ever recorded. Yeaaaaah...that's the ticket. I pity your about-to-be-born baby, destined to be raised in such an atmosphere of stupidity.
This is just a sampling of what I have to put up with for 12 long hours on Saturday. Doing this job has given me a couple of epiphanies.
Epiphany #1: the thicker the accent and more garbled the speech, the lower the IQ of the individual.
Epiphany #2: the lower the IQ, the more confrontational the individual.
Try to imagine it.. 12 hours filled primarily with calls from incoherent idiots looking for a rumble.
One of the few joys I glean from working here, other than my groovy coworkers, is the Urological doctors' line. It's somehow linked to a 1-900 phone sex line advertised in several porn mags. So we often get calls from horny men wanting to be talked into a masturbatory frenzy. I've taken to answering this line with my most sensuous phone sex operator voice possible. It freaks the freaks out to hear a rich sexy voice say "Urological Answering Service" instead of something like "Booty Call Island ~ what's your pleasure, baybeeee". I usually get the same response from every man: "Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh (a la Butthead)....I think I have the wrong number???" ::click::
Oh what fun!
In the meantime, I started this bleak account shortly after 12 pm and it's now 3:10. Having to stop and talk to the stoopid peeple has delayed my writing all this out. I have endured 7 of the 12 hours I must devote to this horrid little place and then I'm free from the world for a day.
I will close with an obvious statement: Stupid people piss me off.
So here I am at my 2nd job at an answering service for doctors, locksmiths, plumbers, etc.
I used to work both Saturday and Sunday here but that changed a couple of months ago. Now I pull a 12 hour stint on Saturday and have Sunday to recover from the horror of the human condition.
I talk to morons on the weekend. Unlike my full-time job where I must deal with 'educated' idiots, at the answering service I'm exposed to the intellectual bottom feeders every few seconds.
Here are some fine examples.
**A caller on an OB/GYN line had her tubes tied the day before and wanted to know if she could eat solid food today. Obviously the doctor had mysteriously rerouted her small intestine through her fallopian tubes during the procedure...
My only comfort is that the doctor has taken her out of the breeding game.
**A caller on the local Catholic church line wanted the father to pray for a man in the hospital. She refused to give her name or number and didn't have the man's hospital room number. A couple of hours later, my coworker received a second call from someone else regarding the same man. She informed us that the man had been admitted with a gunshot wound. Could it be that the first caller was the the shooter? Makes one wonder..
**A caller on the locksmith line needed the locksmith to come unlock her car. "Where is your car, ma'am?" I ask, needing her address or business name where the car is located. "Oh, it's in my driveway." Great, lady. I'll just drag out my crystal ball and scry your exact location. No wonder you locked your dumb ass out of your car. You shouldn't even have a license.
**A caller on the Housing System line called with a stopped up pipe. "I tried to do a warshin' and couldn't." I asked her if she had a back-up problem. "No." I asked her if she had a leak. "No." I asked her what exactly it was doing. "Nuttin'"
I gave up and paged the on-call service man.
**A caller on a local HVAC line needed help installing his washer. Excuse me, but the last time I checked HVAC was for heating and cooling. That said,Mister, unless your washer is a washer/air conditioner combo, I believe you just qualified yourself for the Idiot of the Year award.
**Another caller on the OB/GYN line. She called saying she'd been in pain and having contractions since Wednesday! So you decide to wait until the office closed and then call.... Smart! OH, I get it...you're aiming for a Guinness world record in longest labour ever recorded. Yeaaaaah...that's the ticket. I pity your about-to-be-born baby, destined to be raised in such an atmosphere of stupidity.
This is just a sampling of what I have to put up with for 12 long hours on Saturday. Doing this job has given me a couple of epiphanies.
Epiphany #1: the thicker the accent and more garbled the speech, the lower the IQ of the individual.
Epiphany #2: the lower the IQ, the more confrontational the individual.
Try to imagine it.. 12 hours filled primarily with calls from incoherent idiots looking for a rumble.
One of the few joys I glean from working here, other than my groovy coworkers, is the Urological doctors' line. It's somehow linked to a 1-900 phone sex line advertised in several porn mags. So we often get calls from horny men wanting to be talked into a masturbatory frenzy. I've taken to answering this line with my most sensuous phone sex operator voice possible. It freaks the freaks out to hear a rich sexy voice say "Urological Answering Service" instead of something like "Booty Call Island ~ what's your pleasure, baybeeee". I usually get the same response from every man: "Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh (a la Butthead)....I think I have the wrong number???" ::click::
Oh what fun!
In the meantime, I started this bleak account shortly after 12 pm and it's now 3:10. Having to stop and talk to the stoopid peeple has delayed my writing all this out. I have endured 7 of the 12 hours I must devote to this horrid little place and then I'm free from the world for a day.
I will close with an obvious statement: Stupid people piss me off.