the rules

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heather’s rules for departmental phone answering:

  1. i will answer all of the boss’s phone calls when he is away from his desk, thus assuring my position in the department’s heirarchy.
  2. if you attempt to answer any of the boss’s calls when i am in the room, i will glare at you until you want to cry and call you names under my breath.
  3. i will answer the two next closest phones when they are unattended.
  4. i reserve the right to refuse to answer the next two closest phones if the owners of those phones have pissed me off in the past forty-eight hours (this virtually guarantees i will not ever answer said phones).
  5. i will not answer any of the above phones if the owners are physically within the confines of the department, even if it means they must sprint from one end of the room to the other to answer their own phone.
  6. if there is no one else available, i will answer the remaining three phones in the department when they are unattended.
  7. i reserve the right to refuse to answer a phone if the owner never, ever, ever answers any phone but their own (this decreases total phones to be answered by one).
Posted in: words

6 Thoughts on “the rules”

  1. jena on August 31, 2001 at 12:25 said:

    somewhere a phone is ringing…

  2. iain on September 1, 2001 at 03:05 said:

    i’m going to spend my week next week ringing heather’s boss’s phone whenever she’s just walking out of the office. :)

  3. billy on September 3, 2001 at 07:26 said:

    y’know, if you’d buy a voice processing system from me I could eliminate the need for you to answer the phone entirely.

  4. heather on September 3, 2001 at 12:34 said:

    i’d love to, billy. so would most everyone at work. but, they don’t do “smart” things like giving us voice mail. that would be efficient and we can’t have that.
    by the way, ever hear of mitel?

  5. billy on September 3, 2001 at 19:21 said:

    Heh. Yeah. Funny thing.
    The rumor has it that Mitel was formed by two guys named Mike and Terry who were former execs at Nortel. Due to noncompete clauses when they went out on their own, they formed a company which made Lawn Mowers.
    Except that their lawn mowers functioned just like phone systems.
    And so, Mike and Terry’s Lawnmowers were born.
    MIke + TErry = Mitel.
    It may be just a myth, but it’s a good story.
    Mitel is a good company. Solid base in the hospitality market, from what I understand.
    I’ve beaten them on deals, and I’ve lost deals to them as well. It’s an ugly market, you know…

  6. heather on September 3, 2001 at 19:38 said:

    if i’d only known we were in the market for a new phone system i’d have clued you in and given you some names and numbers. then you’d have had to come up and take me out for drinks. =)
    but, i’m a lowly data entry monkey and they don’t tell me jack.

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