E.P.'s Phone Gnome
Oct. 14th, 2008 06:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfield"Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something."
- Plato
It's no secret among my friends and around my office that I loathe our receptionist. I think she's actually the only person here who doesn't realize that I hate her. You may chalk this up to some combination of my smooth subtlety or her immeasurable stupidity.
I had been here a few years when she was sent here from a temporary worker/placement agency, and the same day I decided to confront my boss and tell him how incompetent she clearly was happened to be the same day that he unilaterally decided he was going to hire her permanently.
From the beginning of the audition process, it had been my hope that we would instead hire someone my age, preferably a girl with whom I could flirt around the Xerox machine. Failing that, I was hoping that it would be someone young enough to to have solid computing skills. Failing that, I was hoping it would be someone who even knew what "e-mail" was. Failing that, I was hoping that it would be someone who didn't spend up to 50 percent of her working day downloading cute pictures of domestic animals.
It didn't work out for me.
Or anyone, really. It's not bad enough that her inefficiency regularly creates more work for me, but I sometimes have to take time out of my day to entertain the volcanic frustrations of my coworkers who are similarly inconvenienced and feel the need to come into my office and vent about it.
But I'll give her this: she knows how to work our phones. In conjunction with our recent office relocation (and because our old phones were irreparably old and broken), we had an entirely new phone system installed. Now on my desk is a shiny new Mitel 5340 IP telephone with all manner of lights and buttons and shit. It looks like the cockpit of a Boeing 747.
And maybe it's this LED intimidation factor, or because I had become so accustomed to my beautifully obsolete Telrad phone, that I have already given up trying to use it. Certain critical functions of this new phone (e.g., putting someone on hold, transferring calls, picking up the handset) are so totally counter-intuitive that I am a little afraid to answer it myself. I've been letting it ring and ring and ring until someone else takes care of it.
Probably not the most mature approach to the problem, but very liberating. And I feel better if I couch it as a form of protest: I know that when I started here I was a leafy-green public relations associate and it was understood that some light clerical and administrative duties -- including answering the telephone -- were required. But now, as the director of communications, I feel like I've graduated from receptionism, especially now that I'm all the way on the other side of the office from the receptionist and the other auxilliary phone jockeys.
Okay, I realize that this is also not very mature. But the receptionist is "mature." And if being mature like the receptionist is "right," then I just want to be wrong.
- Plato
It's no secret among my friends and around my office that I loathe our receptionist. I think she's actually the only person here who doesn't realize that I hate her. You may chalk this up to some combination of my smooth subtlety or her immeasurable stupidity.
I had been here a few years when she was sent here from a temporary worker/placement agency, and the same day I decided to confront my boss and tell him how incompetent she clearly was happened to be the same day that he unilaterally decided he was going to hire her permanently.
From the beginning of the audition process, it had been my hope that we would instead hire someone my age, preferably a girl with whom I could flirt around the Xerox machine. Failing that, I was hoping that it would be someone young enough to to have solid computing skills. Failing that, I was hoping it would be someone who even knew what "e-mail" was. Failing that, I was hoping that it would be someone who didn't spend up to 50 percent of her working day downloading cute pictures of domestic animals.
It didn't work out for me.
Or anyone, really. It's not bad enough that her inefficiency regularly creates more work for me, but I sometimes have to take time out of my day to entertain the volcanic frustrations of my coworkers who are similarly inconvenienced and feel the need to come into my office and vent about it.
But I'll give her this: she knows how to work our phones. In conjunction with our recent office relocation (and because our old phones were irreparably old and broken), we had an entirely new phone system installed. Now on my desk is a shiny new Mitel 5340 IP telephone with all manner of lights and buttons and shit. It looks like the cockpit of a Boeing 747.
And maybe it's this LED intimidation factor, or because I had become so accustomed to my beautifully obsolete Telrad phone, that I have already given up trying to use it. Certain critical functions of this new phone (e.g., putting someone on hold, transferring calls, picking up the handset) are so totally counter-intuitive that I am a little afraid to answer it myself. I've been letting it ring and ring and ring until someone else takes care of it.
Probably not the most mature approach to the problem, but very liberating. And I feel better if I couch it as a form of protest: I know that when I started here I was a leafy-green public relations associate and it was understood that some light clerical and administrative duties -- including answering the telephone -- were required. But now, as the director of communications, I feel like I've graduated from receptionism, especially now that I'm all the way on the other side of the office from the receptionist and the other auxilliary phone jockeys.
Okay, I realize that this is also not very mature. But the receptionist is "mature." And if being mature like the receptionist is "right," then I just want to be wrong.
