Phones

What is wrong with people?

I just answered a phone call at work.  It went a little something like this:

Me: "Good afternoon, this is Kristen."

Caller: [in a demanding tone] "Bob or Joe."

That's it.  No "hello," no "may I speak to," no "please."  Just "Bob or Joe."  Would it have been that difficult to actually ask for either of them rather than just blurt out their names?  If the caller had added a simple "please" at the end, or an even simpler "hi" at the beginning, or had even spoken to me in a tone that didn't sound like he was accusing me of dipping his cats in boiling oil, it probably wouldn't have bothered me so much.

Who am I kidding?

Yes, it would.

I hate answering the phone.  This is mostly because approximately 137% of the people I have to talk to have exceptionally poor phone etiquette.

I often blogstalk a friend of mine who works at a public library and writes highly amusing posts about his phone conversations with socially retarded patrons.  A former roommate of mine often shares stories of crazy phone stories from her job at an architecture firm.  While it should make me feel better to know that I'm not alone in having to deal with these people, it doesn't.  It just makes me more upset.

If I am on the phone with stupid people all day, and my friends are on their phones with stupid people all day, and we all have such different jobs that the chances that all of our stupid people are overlapping each other is practically non-existent, then it only makes sense that most people who are on the phone all day are having to deal with stupid people.

And if there are so many stupid people making these stupid phone calls, then I must assume that some of the people who are on the phone with stupid people are day are, in fact, themselves stupid people.

Based on highly advanced mathematics I calculated in my head as I was typing this sentence, I'm fairly convinced that, worldwide, there are only 27 people who I could talk to on the phone without wanting to punch them in the face.

Unfortunately, none of these 27 people ever seem to be the ones calling my office.