Phone Receptionist for a Day

My Tuesday, which I had formerly planned to spend watching old episodes of Star Trek Voyager and napping, was interrupted around nine o'clock by a telephone call. It was a strange number, but the sight of it sparked a little fire of hope in my chest. I answered it.

"Hello," the voice on the other line said, "is Andy there?"
"Speaking."
"Hi Andy, this is Justin from Temporary Staffing, how are you today?"

Yes! It's finally happened! One of my temp agencies has thrown me a bone! To elaborate: I've been on break since late December, and I was determined to make a lot of money while at home instead of just sitting around on my ass and doing nothing. Despite repeated calls to both of the agencies I work for, nobody ever had any work for me. I ended up playing Super Mario Galaxy from start to finish, shoveling snow, playing a lot of guitar, and watching Star Trek. It appears at the last minute, though, I'm finally going to get some work. The first job, for one day only, was being a phone receptionist at a company down in the valley.

From the instant I accepted the job I knew it was going to be incredibly stressful. Not only did I have to shower, shave, get dressed, and dash downtown in about 45 minutes, but I had to fill in for someone who had been doing the job for years. I didn't really have any idea how big the company was or how many calls I'd be receiving, but I was very nervous walking in the front door.

During the five minutes of training I got on operating the phone the lady showing me the ropes answered four or five calls. She knew the extension off of the top of her head for each call, and the nervousness I felt when entering turned into full-blown fear. Once she left the terror in my chest grew. Who works in what department? Which calls do I transfer where? How do I explain to the callers that I have no idea what the hell I'm doing? For two or three minutes before answering my first call I just stared at the phone, fingers shaking, silently begging it not to ring. Incompetence on my part translates into at least four people getting very angry at me: the guy at the temp agency who gave me the job, the owner of the business, the one who called, and the employee I mistakenly connected him to. Commission-based wages equate into a fifth angry individual if a wrongly connected call actually gets taken care of by the person I directed the caller to.

Ignoring my sweet, desperate pleas to remain silent, the phone eventually rang. The phone didn't have a normal ring like something you'd find on a land line: it was instead a very rapid and continuous series of boops. The lack of spacing between groups of boops threw me off balance and made me feel like I had to answer the phone very quickly. Perhaps this was an intentional design feature, and if so, bravo. The caller wanted to talk to Mike, and after searching for a few minutes for Mike on the employee register I connected the call. As he didn't call back complaining that I had sent him to the wrong person, I assumed I did well. After a few minutes a rather portly fellow poked their head into the reception area.

He greeted me with, "Aaaah, the excitement of answering the telephones!" I replied with a jovial, subservient little "Yup!" I wouldn't quite call the job exciting, although it elicited a similar stress-based response. The man introduced himself as Trent, and apparently he was the "guy who handles the phone problems," so I should turn to him if I have any questions. Apparently this was going to be sooner than I expected, because a few minutes later Trent came in asking me where I had placed the last call.

"Uhh, that last one was to Julie I think."
"Well, you just put that through to Dylan."
Oh Christ, I'm already messing up.
"Well, uh, the list seems to say otherwise." I answered, hoping in vain there might be some sort of reason for the mix up aside for my own stupidity. It appears there was. They had given me an old, completely innaccurate phone list.

Around 11:30 I got a call from a woman, it went something along the lines of this:
"Hello, [company's name]."
"Hi, this is Susan, you have a Relay telephone call request, do you know how to use Relay?"
My immediate reaction went something like, "Oh fuck oh fuck they know I'm new here and they're testing me what the hell is Relay? Shit shit shit!" I asked her to repeat what she had said to buy some more time, racking my brain in an attempt to remember what Relay was, although after a couple seconds I had to admit that I had no idea what she was talking about.

Apparently Relay is an internet based service where one can type out something which will then be read by the employee at Relay to the person actually on the phone. It works the other way around for replies. The combination of adrenaline and confusion inspired an internal response something like, "What the fuck? Am I talking to Stephen Hawking?" In reality the guy on the other line was probably just deaf, although I suspect he had the same manner of motor impairment as Dr. Hawking, because he took forever in replying to what I would say. Throughout the call --filled with huge silences devoid of contact-- the phone booped quietly at me, indicating others were on hold. Eventually I just gave him a random email address --likely not the one he was looking for, since he was being so reticent and slow in providing the requisite information-- and hung up to take care of the other callers.

Aside for that there wasn't much else of interest going on. I attained a moderate amount of competence with routing phone calls around noon or so, and the only other thing they had me do was open and file letters, which was an adventure in and of itself. I was supposed to put them into a "statements" pile and an "invoice" pile, not knowing what exactly a statement or an invoice is, much less the difference between the two. Fortunately, invoices usually come with a big header at the top that says (you guessed it) INVOICE in big, fear-inspiring letters, so that made it a lot easier. When I left the guy I reported my hours to told me he hoped the usual phone receptionist would be sick again tomorrow so they'd get to have me there again. It was a filling compliment, probably not entirely deserved, although I left satisfied.

The experience definitely gave me a fresh resolve to finish my education; eight hours routing telephone calls is a boring way to make a living.