I mentioned that the temp job was with a law firm. All I do is answer phones and greet people. There’s a 20-ish guy who is the ‘runner’ - lots of law firms have runners, who go-fer court papers and all sorts of things - in this small-ish firm, the runner also fills in for the receptionist, so he trained me, as much as I needed training. I really could have figured out the phone. What he didn’t do was teach me how to pronounce some of the jaw-cracking names of staff.
The actual name of the company consists of the top partners, of course, just as usual - those are unremarkable. So answering the phone is no prob - sort of like “Smith, Wesson and Remington, how may I direct your call?” It’s when the caller wants one of the many associates that things get un-fun. “Can I speak to Xrckrkurkisk?” “How do you say his name - Rucklckstrk?”*
And then there’s the accents. I can’t even identify half of the accents I’ve heard over the past few days. There was a nice Southern drawl, and some fine examples of regular old Slurvian - English massacred by the laziness of folks who can’t be bothered to enunciate - but sometimes, it sounds like not only is the person English as a second language, they’ve put the phone in a can then buried it beneath the elm tree in the back yard and gone back through to the living room to place the call, but only after slamming as many marbles as possible into their cheeks. And add into the mix that they ask for the biggest mouthful of consonants in the place — whee! It’s the mystery client! What do they want, how do they want it, and who do they want it from?
Thank goodness for voicemail. And for being the temp — everyone blames the temp, because you can’t possibly expect them to get everything right. And no one cares, cause you won’t be around long enough to punish. Hopefully they’ll know how to forward voicemails.
*Yes, all fictional and all exaggerated.
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