Ring In the Old

Just when I'd almost forgotten I work in state government, a reminder dropped into my lap in the form of some righteous blog fodd - er, I mean, in the form of this handy booklet, published during (I'd estimate) the Kennedy administration to train state employees how to comport themselves on that newfangled phone thingummy.

The kicker is that WE STILL USE THIS BOOKLET. I shit you not, it's still distributed to employees who have extensive telephone dealings with the public, apparently on the idea that the guy in the picture above is exactly what you hope people are imagining when they're on the phone with you.

Check out that phone - that is one high-tech piece of desk candy, n'est-ce pas?


Some things haven't changed much since the Kennedy administration, apparently - I swear I've worked with this guy.


And they were some sick little bastards back then too, weren't they? This is a truly disturbing image. The page goes on to tell you what not to say when answering a coworker's or boss' phone (remember that voicemail will not be invented for a few decades yet): he's hasn't come in, he left early, he's on break, I don't know where he is. Or "He was last seen going into the men's room with a newspaper tucked under his arm 45 minutes ago, and if he hasn't come out in twenty more minutes, I'm sending in a HAZMAT team."


Or "He preferred a violent, untimely death to the prospect of conversation with you."


Well, this is still valid advice, I suppose. Have writing materials. On your desk. Where you work.

I don't know, based on Mr. Question Mark's paper cutouts and the fact that this guy can take notes in the accumulated dust on his desk, something tells me the agency that published this booklet didn't have the highest expectations of its employees' productivity. Just a thought.


UR DOIN IT RONG!!!1!11!!!


Einstein? Seriously?? Given the rest of this booklet, though, I kind of think they're being sarcastic. The other guy looks kind of cool.


Um, because I've become convinced that I'm a frog and hopped onto a levitating lily pad, which just happens to pass right outside my caller's window?

The caller has no one but himself to blame; clearly it's after hours.


I keep in pretty close touch with Paoonel Heisii, myself.


Yes. These are detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to talk on the phone. I guess the agency was afraid the more subtle insults contained earlier in the booklet might be missed on its employees, so in one last desperate attempt, decided to make everything perfectly clear on the last page. "Our employees are such morons they don't even know which way to hold the phone," they are saying. "For God's sake. Are you paying attention to what we're saying here? This is the public you're talking to here. They can HEAR you."

Act your extension, not your IQ.

And So It Begins

Katie and I stopped by the AT&T store yesterday. For about a month, I haven't been able to send text messages, though I could still receive them. It takes time to get yourself worked up to do something, okay?

I explained the problem to the friendly rep by the door and handed her my phone. "Oh, your mailbox is full," she said. "There's not enough memory to send or receive messages when you have that many in your inbox."

"I don't think that's it," I objected, "I can still get texts, it just won't let me send." But I emptied my inbox. "Here, let me show you the error message I get," and I composed a test message to Robbie and hit send.

"Yay!" Robbie texted back, because texting is one of our primary means of communication. The AT&T rep was very nice, and waited until I had left the store to laugh at me.

Katie insisted on loitering a while to play with the iPhone on display. She wants one, which means I get one - I can't very well buy my teenaged daughter a fancier phone than mine - but I found the touchscreen keyboard incredibly difficult to use, and kept missing and hitting the wrong letters with clumsy thumbs, and it doesn't work if you try to press with the tips of your fingernails. "Oh my gosh, I can't use this," I wailed, though Katie (who has a certain vested interest here) kept insisting I'd get used to it quickly.

Someone I once knew said he'd know he was old when a popular gadget came out that he was unable to make heads or tails of. "You know," he said, "like your grandparents with the VCR forever blinking 12:00. When something new comes out and I can't figure out how to work it, like that, I'll know... but I can't wait to see it!"

I hope the iPhone is not that gadget for me, not already, not yet, I'm too young!

Friday I visited a dermatology "medical spa" to have a mole removed, and while there I asked the doctor about how to offset the very beginnings of fine lines around my eyes that I'm beginning to notice. "I've read about retinoid cream, and how it lessens wrinkles by accelerating skin cell turnover," I said, "and I found some at the grocery store, but is there a brand you recommend?"

It turns out there is, indeed - in prescription strength, and they sell it for $83.00 a tube (but with a 20% discount it's only $66!), but the dermatologist, without half a moment's hesitation, cheerfully recommended Botox. "Look," he said, handing me a mirror, "smile, and I'll show you." He put his fingers beside my eyes and stretched the smile-crinkles apart. "Botox will just relax the muscles that squinch up your skin like that."

"I think I'll get the cream," I said, because (1) I think I'd rather get wrinkles than lose the ability to smile with my eyes, and (2) forget my incompetence with the iPhone, thinking of myself as a person who gets Botox would really make me feel old.

Revisitation

This time tomorrow, I should know a lot more about San Angelo than I do now. We'll be visiting Miss Hattie's Bordello Museum - particularly of interest as I understand they sometimes have re-enactors performing there.

You wouldn't be able to sleep, either.

Ah, the enduring glamor of the sex trade! Last week, a friend and I were lamenting the dearth of variety among 1-900 lines, and came up with the idea of a discount phone sex service - oh, say, $1.50 for the first minute, and just 39 cents a minute thereafter - which would be so cheap because it would be a random grab bag. You might get some sultry-voiced individual of the gender of your preference, describing in detail all the borderline illegal things he or she was going to do to you; or you might get Ernest Borgnine offering you a Siberian toenail massage. And no, you don't get to hang up and call back.

Or as in the present case, you could get a lapful of Slappy White, purring fish breath in your face and digging his claws affectionately into your bare legs.

I gotta get out of town.

Don't Answer the Phone!

My phone at work is supposed to be safe. It better be, since it doesn't have caller ID; so if it's subject to hostile calls, I expect to collect hazard pay. As I've mentioned before, it rings only when my supervisor wants something (the less said about that today, the better), when it's time for break, when one of my district contacts needs a project worked on, or when the former holder's collection agents get hungry.

Also, sometimes Tony calls and tries to prank me, or at least I hope that's him. "Yes, I need some information on -" the caller will begin, and I immediately yell, "No you don't! Shut up!!!"

Fortunately my boss has never happened to be in earshot for this.

But today, unless Tony got someone with a non-goofy voice involved, the most terrifying thing in the world happened: I got an actual phone call from John Q. Public himself.

John had a specific question about the particular function I've recently been tapped to specialize in, so I sat on the phone with him for five or six minutes, trying to help him find the information he needed on our website. Fortunately he was pretty forgiving. This was the very first time I've ever interacted with the public as the representative of a giant faceless bureaucracy, so I was terribly nervous.

You're supposed to have, I'm pretty sure, a flat, nasal, uninterested voice. But I'm still a bit perky from my marketing days. I believe the top priority for a government employee, fielding a phone call from a member of the public, is to get said member off the phone as soon as possible, with minimal impact to one's vitally important smoke break schedule; and minus the actual smoking, I find myself in complete agreement with this philosophy.

But I really hate it, I really do, if I can't help someone, or if I can't help someone as much as I should be able to. And we don't really have the tools to answer John's questions in the most straightforward and sensible way. And God only knows, far greater beings than myself have tried to bring these tools to my agency, and failed, or died horribly, in the trying.

Nobody told me, when I agreed to take these duties on, that the actual public might find me and call me and that I might actually have to speak to them. I don't remember ever signing on for this. I wonder if I can get the agency to hire Tony as my personal secretary so he can field all my calls?

Why I Don't Have Caller ID at Work

One of the guys I work with always ends his phone conversations with, "Well, I'm going to let you go now." The phrase is deeply gracious; the implied meaning is, "I would love to continue this conversation with you, but I realize you have more important things to do with your time than talk to me; so I'll make the sacrifice of getting off the phone now."

But he always says it so abruptly that I'm pretty sure he's cutting off the other person in mid-sentence.

After about seven panicked phone calls from my supervisor today, all of them interrupting me and hindering the work that she was calling to check up on, I kind of take his point.

Justin and I were agreeing this weekend that "I'm going to let you go now" has been used to death, as a means of ending a phone conversation. We were bandying about ideas for a few different approaches.

You could take "I'm going to let you go" to the level of unmitigated groveling: "I'm just not worthy to talk to you. Please - I know you mean to be kind, but you're only embarrassing me."

There's the brutally honest approach: "I'm tired of talking now. Goodbye!" and the even more brutally honest approach: click

You could dust off that pop psychobabble you haven't yet managed to forget from the 90s: "This conversation has really helped me grow as a person, but I feel that I've reached a stage in my development where it's time to let go and move on." Or just break it off cold: "I really think we should talk to other people."

You could feign amnesia. "Wait a minute - what were we talking about? -- Where am I?? --Who are you?!?" Or an emergency. "Oh my God! My car/iPod/pancreas/great-uncle just spontaneously combusted!"

And of course there's always the imperious, "I grow weary of you. Begone!"

I'm thinking of trying all of these in rotation on my supervisor until she just stops calling.

Dating

When's the last time you asked somebody for a date?

It is, of course, an unbearably awkward experience. There's the phone number scrawled on a yellow sticky-note, under the name of a relative stranger with whom you know you have at least a few things in common. I dread the phone anyway, so that makes the whole ordeal that much worse.

But if you gotta, you gotta, right? So I pick up the phone and call. The person on the other end appears to be very glad to hear from me, but is on the other line with work right now, and will call back tomorrow. Fine with me! I'm just glad to get off the phone. Oh, but wait. Don't you need my number?

"The number you're calling from? Actually, it's on my phone."

Huh huh, oh yeah, I guess it is, I'm such an idiot. Is any of this actually worth it?

And it is, of course, because I get off the phone and tell Anna, "Okay, I set up your play date with your friend for Saturday," and she shouts "Hooray!" and hugs me tight, and bounces joyfully around the room for about seven minutes.

What can I say, I'll do anything for love...