Jer2002

I'm the same way. I'd much rather have the correct street address and use MapQuest, or its Yahoo or MSN equivalent to get directions so I can look at the damn map, rather than have directions from people who do not realize that I would have no idea what they are talking about.

Or, worse yet, "Turn where X used to be." In New Orleans I am constantly being told to "Turn past where Schwegmann's used to be," which is a grocery store that went out of existence just a few years ago that was here forever. But hey, I don't know where it used to be!

My favorite, though, was one time when I was told to "turn between where the tire store used to be and the glass shop used to be." Uh.....right.

My grandmother to her dying day was incapable of giving directions that involved telling you to actually turn left or right. You'd have to "go to Camp Bowie" and "go a ways on the boulevard" and on and on. I'd have to stop her and start at the very beginning: "When I get to Camp Bowie, do I turn towards downtown or away from downtown?" (I never even suggested left or right, it never worked.) Amazingly enough, her directions were very helpful once I knew which direction she wanted me to turn. (The fact that she lived in Fort Worth for 101 of her 102 years probably helped, you think?)

I'm back from the high school graduation trip and wanted to add to a couple of recent topics.

Chocolate: Why does Hershey buy product lines because people love them and then change them so they don't taste right any more? Godiva in the U.S. is ok now, but it's not nearly as good as it was before Hershey decided to make it less creamy and make the hazlenut filling taste more like peanut butter (I was a consumer taste tester on that decision and I lost). And recently they bought Heath and now Heath Bars come not only in one piece rather than two, but the chocolate, which was very creamy, is now much more dry flakey hard Hershey. I've found pockets of the old Heath Bars, but they'll soon all be gone.

Phone Etiquette: When I answer the phone "my name," why do callers say, "I'd like to speak with my name please" or "is my name there?" Hey dufus, I just said "my name." I didn't say, "my name's office," or "my name's line."

In most cases I'd rather get voicemail than someone live because the someone live in most cases can't take a simple message. Yes, you would think I was leaving a nuclear code when I'm just trying to say, "please use the #60 lb white we discussed earlier." But then, in most cases I'd rather email someone.

And I do wonder, if you have voicemail, and the only thing the live person answering the phone can do is put me through to your voice mail, why is the live person answering the phone anyway? But I would hope my exasperation isn't audible when I'm talking to the poor person who is forced to continually interrupt their work to answer a phone without the wherewithal to do anything for the caller.

I recall when I hadn't been a secretary for years, but was expected to answer my boss's phone if she wasn't around. This one guy would call and I couldn't help him ever because he always wanted to know where she was, and I never knew. She didn't keep a calendar and if she had, I wouldn't have been in charge of it. One day he got really snitty with me and I finally said, "Excuse me, what is your title?" He said, "I'm a vice president!" (all indignant.) I said, "So am I." "You're not her assistant?" "No, she doesn't have one. You may have noticed, since you work for the same company, that almost no one has assistants these days." Well he went on to be oh so very sorry. And I just told him, "Look. If I were an assistant, your behavior would be way out of line. NO ONE deserves to be treated with anything but respect. And if you think the way to get through the gatekeeper is to offend her, you won't be very successful." He and I ended up having a pretty good working relationship later when he was a client of mine. But he did learn his lesson. He's always nice to the person answering the phone, no matter the rank. It's a lesson unsuccessful people have never learned.

Hi there,

I'm an avid Aussie TAR and TWOP fan and i can't wait for TAR 5 to begin.

Firstly congrats to Jenex and i hope all goes well with you and your hubby in China.

Secondly, as a switchboard Operator in an Australian Dental hospital, i do find problems with people and because i'm the first one to answer the phone, i'm automatically supposed to help them with their problems, change appointments and generally know everything about dentistry.

Another bugbear of mine is the use of voicemail and people answering their phones. I guess because i answer my phone they want to vent their frustrations about not getting through but i try the best i can. I understand they are in pain, or in a hurry but having a go at me (where i have been pleasant and polite) really irritates me.

I've been guilty of this. I've found that when I'm calling someone for the first time and I don't know them well, it seems rude to just jump right in to asking what I need. Like there is a small pleasentry/ introduction missing.

This is a really important lesson. I've gotten more than one of my jobs because the assistant or secretary liked me.

Absolutely. When I first started at Mega WhiteShoe lawfirm, the partner in charge of teaching the associates how to behave gave us a very stern lecture on the proper treatment of clerks and secretaries in our firm, other firms, and in courts and judges' chambers. He told us that we could be as rude as we wanted to opposing counsel, but if he ever heard of us being less than perfectly kind and polite to a clerk or secretary we would be out on our asses that same day. We didn't hire several summer associates because of reports back from clerical staff that they were arrogant or rude or overly demanding.
The top partners in the firm seemed to have a dispensation to be as rude as they wanted to our own staff, but even they went out of their way to be respectful to staff at other firms and especially at courts.

I've always thought that you can't go wrong applying basic, every day courtesy and etiquette to business as well as home life, but somehow, many people seem to think that work is a separate, BioSphere-like planet where manners aren't necessary. Aside from the fact that you'll alway get farther with honey than with vinegar, being at work doesn't mean that people stop being, well, human! Courtesy still applies!
It's not rocket science--Miss Manners would be very happy to instruct people if they'd only buy her book. Even better, your mother and father should have taught this stuff all during growing up. /rant over.
ETA: Peanutbuttercup, could you please ease my mind of a nagging question that's been hanging around for years? WHAT does 'whiteshoe law firm' mean? Other than being quite high falutin', of course. Why white shoes? Even after Labor Day? The mind boggles....

At my company, it is because when someone from FDA calls, we have to find someone to speak with that person live, even if it's not the person who's being called.
How can I get that job?

Probably to deal with all the idiots who call in and say: "I'm dealing with someone but I forget her name." Or "I don't know who I'm supposed to talk to." Or, my personal favorite "Yeah, someone called me from this number?"

One of my greatest phone peeves (and, as a receptionist, I have a zillion phone pet peeves but this one is near the top!) is people who call and talk to me on speaker phone. That is just so damned ignorant. First of all, it's basically saying to me: "You are so worthless and unimportant, I can't even be bothered to pick up the phone to speak to you." Secondly, people don't realize that a speaker phone picks up every sound in your office...the radio, people talking in the back, you shuffling your papers...it's really difficult to hear the person who's actually talking. Third, people who call on speaker phone never pay attention when the phone is ringing so I end up having this same conversation several times a day:

Me: Good morning, Stupid Law Firm.
Idiot: <silence>
Me: Hello?
Idiot: Oh, hi. Is this Stupid Law Firm?
Me: Yes it is.
Idiot: Oh. You didn't answer the phone that way. You just said hello.
Me: No, I said "Good morning, Stupid Law Firm", you didn't hear me the first time.
Idiot: Yeah, it's kind of hard to hear you.

Well try PICKING UP THE DAMN PHONE! I cannot even begin to tell you how much speaker phone irritates me. Are you really so damned busy that you can't hold the receiver in your hands? I mean, come on now, you don't need both hands free to jerk off.

One year, my editor got the bright idea to do a Christmas feature about when people discovered there was no Santa Claus. (If no one ever told you that, then yes, there is definitely a Santa Claus. Pay no attention to anyone who says otherwise. They're lying to make you cry.) So our reporter who covered the university called the university president's wife. She's got him on speaker phone, but doesn't say anything about other people being there. He tells her he's working on a story and wants to ask her a question. So she says OK.

He says, "So when did you find out Santa Claus wasn't real?" and she yanks up her phone's handset in a big hurry.

The moral of the story? Never use speaker phone when your grandchildren are in the room.

My speakerphone story:
I work from home part-time, which is how I manage to get on TWOP mid-day. But I always make it in for the Wednesday a.m. staff meetings. However, in 2003, we had a huge snowstorm and I was among the staffers who hadn't dug out by that Wednesday. So I got hooked in to the meeting by phone and decided to use my speakerphone so I could take notes.

Now, the day before, Priscilla, one of my cats, had gotten outside and hidden under the back porch. I'd sent a long, humorous anecdote about digging out a crawl space for myself and following her under the porch and trying to get her to come out, etc., etc. And I'd sent that anecdote to several co-workers.

Anyway, I'm on speakerphone for the staff meeting, and it's drawing to a close, and Priscilla comes in to the room and meows about as loudly as she ever has. And everyone on the other end cracked up. Then someone retold the anecdote, and Priss kept meowing in the background, and we were probably that no one needed medical care because they were laughing so hard.

Hildy, as best as I can tell, white shoes were once commonly worn my upper crust waspy men with their Brooks Brothers suits. I find it hard to picture, but that's what folks tell me. So it became kind of a shorthand way of designating conservative, elitist firms in law, banking, and finance.

At my job before my current one, I worked at a struggling dotcom, and one of the ways they kept costs down was to only have one land line in the office and make everyone use their cell phones if they wanted someone to get in touch with them. Whenever the landline rang, which was rarely, whoever was nearest it was supposed to answer it and handle the call. One day, I answer the phone and the guy on the other end wants to talk to "that person, you know, the one with the American accent". Which excluded the editor (English) and office manager (Irish) but left the rest of the office as potential candidates. I tried to help the guy figure out who he wanted (was it about graphics? did someone interview you? are you looking for a job?) but he got frustrated and hung up. Five minutes later he called back. "I want to talk to the one with the American accent." I tried again. He hung up again. A few minutes later he called back. I made someone else take the call. Same story. He called at least ten times and we started rotating answering the phone and *everyone* in the office answered at least once, but he never found the person he wanted.

My current phone irritation is getting calls for the guy who had this number before me. I've gotten calls from the yoga center, his high school reunion planning committee, someone with a stripperish name, and someone who only speaks Spanish. None of whom I can help at all, and most of whom won't stop calling.

Revisiting our discussion from a couple weeks ago when piperdown had to fill out 69 forms in triplicate in order to send suga a Coffee Crisp...a kind TWoPper was nice enough to loan me her Season One dvds of 24 so, when I sent them back to her, I included a bunch of Canadian chocolate bars. But I didn't bother filling out any forms, I just stuck them in the envelope and sent them illegally. And they got there no problem. The moral of the story? Always do the opposite of what the government tells you - it makes life much simpler!

Thank you, PBC. I've always been curious as to why the white shoe came to be associated with fancy law firms, and now I know it's because of the sartorial gaffes of our forebears. That's comforting.
And another question: What the hell does Cromulent mean? Not in three different dictionaries I've tried.

This is my biggest pet peeve too. Even worse though is when I answer the phone "sparky1", and they ask for some random person. I try to politely explain that "I'm sorry, you've dialed my direct line, I don't know this person that you're trying to reach", and they're all, well can't you just walk down the hall and look for them? um, no. My office has over 1000 employees (including lawyers, secretaries, etc.) spanning 11 floors of a large NYC office building.

The absolute worst phone incident though, was the following:

I am in the Corporate Finance group at my office. It's probably one of the bigger groups, with over 100 people. I work with approximately 10-12 of these people, ever (we're split within the group amongst various specialties - I work with energy companies). Having only started here a year ago, I don't really know anyone else. My phone rings one day, and it's a firm receptionist, asking if I can take a all from some corporate executive I don't know, from some company I've never heard of. I explain that I don't know this person, so why would they want to speak to me?

Her answer boiled down to - well, the person (some other associate yours truly had never met, not in my group) they wanted to speak to wasn't in their office, so I basically pulled a name out of the firm directory at random to see if you could answer their very specific question about their deal that was closing. Meanwhile I've got this increasingly agitated corporate executive on hold for ten minutes.

Needless to say, I didn't take the call. And then had to complain to the supervisor. I later met the associate that this guy was looking for, and he doesn't even sit on the same floor as me. If the guy is insisting on speaking to someone live, the least you could do is try to track down the associate's secretary to find out who he works with, or call the person sitting in the office next door who might have some kind of knowledge as to the associate's wherabouts. Gah.

My phone peeve is answering the phone and having the person on the other end start chatting away without ever identifying themselves. Sure, there are some people who are identifiable by voice alone, but not many of them, and I loathe having to ask "Who is this?" or pretend to knowledge I don't really have. Arg!

Thanks much to those of you who helped make my Anchorage plans! I'm still taking recommendations until I leave on Thursday, but the 4 places already mentioned are definitely on my agenda.

Hildy, try this dictionary Cromulent

Hildy, "cromulent" is a Simpsons thing. It's a made up word. It's from an episode where Bart was making up words in the classroom. I vaguely recall it, but it took my asking a die-hard fan to get an explanation, so you aren't alone.

ETA, Looks like M.Darcy beat me to it!

"Cromulent" has something to do with the Simpsons.
Cromulent

you people are too fast for me. I am a shamefully slow librarian today (I am counting "cromulent" as a reference question in my log for the day. As long as I am answering questions here, TWOP is a legitimate use of my work time IMHO.)

I rarely give out my work number, so if it's an outside call, there's a 99% chance it's a wrong number, or the worst, a fax machine. I'm always tempted to just ignore it, but I never do.

I've had my current home number for 2 1/2 years now, but the previous owner STILL gets more messages than I do. They never leave any real info, just "Please call back, this is in regards to an important personal matter." I have a strong suspicion they're debt collectors. Colin, if you're out there, pay your damn bills!

Aha! I think I've watched perhaps two episodes of The Simpsons in my entire life, so no wonder I had not a single clue. And considering that the place I heard it first was The West Wing forums, I was doubly disconnected.
Many thanks to all you culturally connected folks!

Ugh I hate people who talk on speaker phones almost as much as I hate people that yell at me on cell phones. Just because it doesn't have a cord doesn't mean it needs to be treated as a megaphone.

Oh and speaking of getting calls for the wrong people. Dallas/Fort Worth has 3 area codes. If you try my cell phone number with one, you get a wrong number. If you try it with another, you get me. If you try it with the third you get Wells Fargo. All the damn time I get people calling me with "Yes, is this Wells Fargo?" "No, that's such and such." "Oh, how do you know that?" "Because believe it or not you're not the first genius to not write down an area code when given a phone number". Ugh, and it's always at 7am on days I don't have to get up early too.

I once had a completely bizarre conversation with someone who called my number in error. It went something like:

Me: "Hello."
Idiot: "Is Fred there?"
Me: "I'm afraid you have the wrong number."
Idiot: "Well, who's this?"
Me: "Um, it doesn't matter who I am. You have the wrong number."
Idiot: "Damn. Are you sure?"
Me: "Well, yeah. There's no Fred here."
Idiot: "Well, how long have you had this number?"
Me: "About six years."
Idiot: "Well, this is the number Fred gave me. Are you sure he's not there?"
Me: "Yeah, pretty sure." (I know. I should have said, "I'll go look" and then just set the phone down and walked away. But it didn't occur to me until later.)
Idiot: "You've been no help at all."

Idiot slams down the phone. Two minutes later, Idiot calls back.

Me: "Hello."
Idiot: "God damn it! Stop answering this number! Shit."

Slams down phone again. God, that was fun.

My old home phone number used to be the number for a company called York Disposal they had changed their number but some of their old garbage bins had the old number on it, so we were getting calls all the time to book a pick-up. After a few years of this, we just started taking the appointments..."yeah, sure we'll be there Saturday. 9am? Great see you then." Hopefully that didn't fuck anybody up.

What's with the past tense, folks? I kid you not, the first day back at work after Memorial Day in this small maritime law firm I work at in New Orleans, at least half the attorneys showed up wearing their seersucker suits (!) and white shoes (!!) with, of course, their bow ties(!!!). I felt like I'd stepped into a time warp -- a pleasant one, but definitely unmistakeable.

If you want things done the ooooold-fashioned way, come to New Orleans. These peoples' families have been here for upwards of 150 years and they see no reason to do anything differently than they've always done! Down to the charmingly stuffy language: "I await your advices." "With kindest regards, I remain...." and on and on. But the true up side is that they are so polite, they say thank you for everything. My boss even ends every tape he dictates with a polite thank you!

As for phone stuff, we got a phone number when we first moved to DC a few years ago that had about a million calls for "Worship Master Hines." My hubby knew that that was a position in a Shrine temple, but of course DC is a big city so we had no idea which Shrine temple. Finally one nice lady agreed to call the temple, get WM Hines' new phone number, and call us back with it. We then called him and asked if we could give out his new number. He was truly delighted that we'd gone to that much trouble and was happy to have us give it out. So we pasted the number to our phone so anyone who answered would have it handy, and gave it out for several months till the calls finally stopped coming in.

Many years ago I would receive a phone call at least once a week from an obviously elderly lady asking for a Mrs. Wannell. I finally looked the other woman's phone number up and discovered that my caller was reversing two digits. So from then on when she called, I explained politely to her that she'd misdialed, and that her friend's number was xxx-xxxx. She would snort, very ride;u, "Well, hmmph!" and slam the phone down in my ear. It happened at least once a week for the entire three years I had that phone number, and she was rude to me every single time. It was pretty funny!

Edited to get my holidays straight, since Miss Manners would kill anyone who wears white shoes after Labor Day! And because apparently I can't write down a coherent thought today. Sigh. I blame it on waaaay too much good food last night at a French Quarter restaurant, Mr. B's, including four desserts shared amongst three people!

In my case, it's because my boss wants clients to deal with a live person. I think it's a combination of him thinking it's more professional and a desire to have a "Wizard of Oz"-type effect: he wants people to think he has several agents working for him when in reality it's a one-person operation. That way he can tell clients he's personally handling their account and it sounds better, when in reality, there's no one else to do it! (We share resources/office space with a larger firm, so clients who visit could conceivably think that some of the other agents work for him.)

So believe me, I think both the clients and I would rather that they could just leave a voicemail message, but he insists I take them all the old-fashioned way. And accordingly, most people will just leave their name and number and perhaps a brief message, but I do get those people who start going into their life stories, and I always wind up having to summarize to something simple, like "wants to finalize hotel reservation," because without any prior knowledge of your plans or way to pull up your records or itinerary, it's meaningless to me. And also, they're usually rattling things off 240, and if you stop them and ask them to clarify, they'll get all pissy and be like, "I SAAAAAID...", so it's usually easier just to boil it down to something basic.

Incidentally, the most dreaded words in a receptionist/assistant's life? "Maybe you can help me!" It's not that we don't want to (and not that I haven't said the same thing when I was on the other end of the phone on occasion); it's just that we're generally not privy to the sort of information you would need, so while ocaasionally we can, this is generally the cue for the caller to launch into an intricate monologue that will usually wind up being, to be blunt, a waste of both of our times.

I went through the "previous occupant is a deadbeat" thing at my old place. About three times a week for the entire 16 months I lived there, we'd get phone calls for her. You can always tell when it's debt collectors calling because they refuse to tell you who they are. My boyfriend (now my fiance) would get into "But I asked you first! You're the one that called me!" arguments with them. He loved it.

But better yet were the phone calls from her friends (I guess) who would mumble at us in some form of drunken slur that does nothing to legitamize ebonics as a dialect. We couldn't understand them, and they would get pissed that we were not their drug dealer/pimp/ho/whatever.

But I especially enjoy the periodic butt-dialed calls I get. You know, when someone sits on their cell phone and accidentally dials a number? Hilarious. You can hear traffic, a night club, all kinds of neat stuff. Sucks when the machine gets it though, because then you have five minutes of this stuff to wade through when you check your messages.

I've had my home number for 5 years, and I still get calls from people looking for Candleland, the apparently defunct candle wholesaler that had my phone number before me. 2 years in, I still put up with it, but after 5 years I yell at people to buy a new phone book.

Two other phone number stories (man, I have a lot of these):

First, when I was going to law school in Philadelphia, I had a phone number that was one digit off from the Philadelphia parking authority. and the difference was 7727 vs. 7227 (2s and 7s get mixed up a lot). I usually was pretty nice about it and set people straight, because we've all mis-dialed a phone like this. But on Yom Kippur? when I'm fasting? and trying to sleep late because I can't eat or drink anything until sundown? Yeah. A woman called me at 7 a.m., and me, in totally groggy, obviously just woken up from a deep slumber voice, answers the phone. No hello, nothing, she's just all "can I park on the street for free today?" Me? "why yes, yes you can". And then I just hung up the phone.

Second - I also have a fax number, which, I've discovered, is the exact same fax number except for area code (212 vs. 262) of the S.C. Johnson and Sons legal department. I, being a lawyer, have actually tracked down the head paralegal at SCJ&S to inform her of this problem, because I regularly get all sorts of confidential/trade secrets stuff from their local counsel (everywhere in the world). She actually sent me a really lovely note (by fax, of course!) thanking me. But these people who send faxes? are morons. No cover sheets, no attn: line, no "if you received this fax in error please contact_______", and half of them are in Korean or Chinese, so I have no way of letting people know that their stuff, usually involving deadlines, has been sent to the wrong place. I've taken to turning my fax machine off when I'm not around, because I figure that the only time I really should get faxes is when I'm expecting them.

I actually have debt collectors calling me about my neighbor! It's bad enough that they would call and endlessly harass people who are struggling financially, but I think calling their neighbors is a bit rough. First of all, why should I be getting up to answer telephone calls about debts when they are not my debts? Second, even if she is a deadbeat, should my neighbor be subjected to having her entire neighborhood get calls from what are obviously debt collectors? I think it's heinous. It's happened several times now. They ask if I can give my neighbor across the street, Amanda X, a message to call 1-800-555-1212 on an "urgent personal matter." I pretend to be totally clueless and say "Oh my God, is it her family? Did someone die? Is someone in the hospital? You must tell me exactly what this is regarding so that I can break the news to Amanda personally, I don't want her to receive some crushing news from a stranger over the telephone!"
Then the debt collector has to hem and haw and say, "it's an urgent personal matter, but we can't say anymore." So then I respond with, "is Amanda a spy or a terrorist or something? Is this a code message? I don't think I want to be involved in this, it might be a criminal conspiracy! I think I need to report you to the police! What was your name and number again?" and let them try to go on after that. Basically I just enjoy playing dumb and torturing them. And I never mention any of this to my neighbor, naturally.

Snicker, snicker. Peanutbuttercup, you make me wish this were happening to me. It sounds like fun to torture someone who actually thought it would be a bright idea to annoy folks completely unrelated to the problem. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that your neighbor had filed for bankruptcy, making it illegal for the collectors to call them directly. Given that what they are trying to do definitely borders on illegal, at that point, I say have at 'em!

ETA Sparky1, I have the same problem with mail here at the uber corp. Our responsibilities are sort of divided by state, here. I'm the unlucky person in charge of Delaware. So any time a legal document comes in which references a Delaware corporation (right; they are ALL Delaware corporations), the mail room sends it to me. It's kind of fun knowing who is suing whom, though!

Here's my I think interesting story about the people who had the apartment before us. It was kind of in an unsavoury neighbourhood, you know hookers and such, and the day we moved in, a cop came to our door looking for the previous renter.
When I moved into my first apartment, the first day a guy jumped from a second floor window at a house across the street, cops were called, glass shards were waved about, pretty exciting to me coming from the suburbs. It was pretty much a let down when we moved in to our house in September and no cops.

Bart didn't make it up. The kids were in an assembly watching a film about Jebediah Springfield. The film contained the line, "A noble heart embiggens the smallest man."

In the back of the room, Mrs. (Miss? I'm not sure) Krabappel (Bart's teacher) turns to Miss (sometimes Mrs.) Hoover (Lisa's teacher) and says something about how she never heard that word (embiggens) before she moved to Springfield. Miss (sometimes Mrs.) Hoover says, "I don't know why. It's a perfectly cromulent word."

ETA: Krabappel is a Mrs. "How come you don't live with Mr. Krabappel?" "Because he chased something fluffy down a rabbit hole."

I know too much about "The Simpsons," true, but the last bit and confirmation of the first came from my husband, who keeps useless trivia in his brain in the space where useful information (like what day of the month the phone bill is due) could be. It does make him much more interesting to talk to, though, and a good person to have on your Trivial Pursuit team.

Thanks for the perfectly cromulent explanation, auntlada! I got mine all second hand, so I'm not terribly surprised that it was lacking in a bit of accuracy. Okay, nearly all its accuracy.

I'm so proud to be from Virginia.

One of my biggest pet peeves are people who think that my name is a license for them to try out every freakin' Simpsons impression they can do on me. Because someone named Bart has never heard a Simpsons impression before in their life.

And I'm not up on all my Simpsons trivia, so I didn't even know "cromulent" was a Simpsons thing.

The Simpsons episode I can relate to the most is "Itchy & Scratchy Land" and the struggles of finding a Bart license plate at theme park gift shops.

In other news, GO PISTONS! I'm a little jealous of a friend of mine who's going to the game. But I'll watch it with friends, and it will be a good time.

And if the pattern from the Wings' victory of 2002 holds out, the biggest problem will be folks drinking all night and driving to their factory jobs in the morning--both the drunk driving and drunk folks around industrial equipment.

YES, Bart Ender! I wish I were in Michigan this week to share in the joy!

Macaddict, I'm for fleeing the State. Are you with me? How prevalent must this problem be, if they feel the need to launch a campaign? Ugh.

Edited because proper spelling is our friend.

I've got lots of phone stories too.....but here are two of my favorites.

I used to work for an ad agency in Cleveland which had a phone number that was exactly the same as the phone number (except for the area code) for the Fruit of the Loom Company -- which, of course, was not even in the same state. Got lots of calls from people who wanted to complain about their underwear.

And then just two nights ago, my cell phone alerts me that I've got a text message. And it's a love note! Imagine my excitement until I realized that I did not have a clue who the sender was, but knew it was no one with whom I'm actually acquainted. After a couple of notes, I sent a message back, saying "Who ARE you?" He sheepishly replied that he had reversed a couple of numbers, "sorry." I spent the rest of the night feeling sorry for myself.

I'm putting my comments about a couple of things that were posted by others in Miss Alli's moderator thread here so we don't make Miss Alli cry.

As to the use of "y'all," I'm definitely with those who hold that it is used for the plural "you" in the South.

And Miss Dona, the networks are already beginning to announce premiere dates for the fall season, so it should be possible to deduce the date of the TAR 5 finale really soon. And since TAR 6 seems like it'll be ending sometime in December, that may be the more difficult date to line up anyway.

Why I love living in NYC. I saw on Gothamist that the Beastie Boys were going to be performing on 53rd & Broadway for Letterman tonight. I work at 53rd and 6th. My friends from work and I went out and actually got to see them film (we had a source that let us know they would be filming from the subway to the theater, so we hung out be the subway entrance and got to see them stand around for 10 minutes waiting too). Biggest shock: They're lip-syncing. Watch it tonight and see if you can catch us milling around outside the Europa Cafe when they come out of the subway.

Here's my phone peeves:

I live in a Spanish-speaking country. Therefore, I answer the phone "Alo?" instead of "Hello!" My mother-in-law hangs up on me every time, because she simply cannot grasp the idea that phones are answered differently down here. I can't wait until we move to Sarajevo and I start answering the phone in Bosnian. It'll blow her mind.

I also hate being put on hold for extended periods of time, particularly when I'm calling the U.S. If it's costing the caller a small fortune, at least have the courtesy to offer to call back! Also, no one should ever be on hold longer than sixty seconds. If longer is necessary, pick up the receiver, let the caller know the situation, apologize, and offer to call them back.

Colombia has a somewhat unreliable phone and power system, particularly during mudslides and storms. If it's crackly, just call me back. There's no reason to waste money on a call when I can't understand a word you're saying.

I hate hate hate speaker phones. I'm hard of hearing, so for me it's just impossible to hear over the speaker. I just say "Pardon, I don't understand, could you please use the receiver?" until they pick up the damn receiver.

Finally, not everyone likes to chat on the phone. Some people, like me, would rather email or see you in person. I have a friend, who lives two blocks from me, who will try to engage me in a one-hour phone conversation. Dude, just come over if you want to talk that badly.

I beg to differ, theschnauzers -- it depends on where in the South you are. I've lived in various areas of the South, from Texas to Georgia, and have noticed a very regional distinction in that some areas y'all is plural but in others it's totally singular and only when you get to all y'all do you end up with the plural. I think the latter outweighs the former. It's one of those words that doesn't sound right tripping off the lips with a Minnesota accent whether it's singular or plural, though!

Pet Peeve: At work, messages on my voicemail that are really really really LONG with uh, and duh and so on and so forth. But the message leaver than spits out a quick unintelligible phone number so I have to listen to the entire dumb message AGAIN.

When I was in grad school I recieved messages from creditors looking for a family member that I was not in touch with. It was pretty freaky-scarey. But boy the neighbor thing is just so much worse.

Does anyone want to talk about candy again? I really love the food and candy discussions. Even though its too hot here to eat much.

I always thought "y'all" was singular and "you all" was plural. But "you all" has to be said fast enough that you can imagine it turning into "y'all".

Interesting, Mama Tiger -- I've lived in Kentucky, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Texas and I've never heard y'all being used [correctly] in the singular. In fact, my family moved to Texas during the oil boom in the early '80s, and that was one of the ways the natives liked to figure out who was a transplant -- if you ever said y'all to just one person, you were clearly a know-nothing outsider. I assumed it was true all over the south.


I have had to deal with the "someone with the same name as me is a deadbeat" -- it SUCKS! When I was still in OK, I got calls from debt collectors constantly, and they never believed my cries of "Yes, I'm boilergal but I'm not that boilergal!"

In our last house, our phone number was posted on the web as the point-of-contact for the St. Martin de Porres Society, which sends med students to volunteer in South America. I'd find messages on our machine from college students on the other side of the country, telling me they'd like to volunteer in Colombia for the summer. I always felt I had to call them back, rather than leaving them hanging, but I never had the requested advice for where they should be calling. It took quite a while to convince the webmaster on the other side that they should remove our number from their site, and we eventually changed our voicemail to say "If you're trying to reach the Sociedad de San Martin de Porres, you've reached the wrong number...."

As a born and raised Texan I've only ever used "Y'all" as a plural. As in "What are y'all having for dinner?"

The most fun with the phone thing is dorm phones where everyone gets a new number every semester almost. One of my best friends moved into my boyfriend's suite that was previously occuppied by a guy named "Huy" pronounced "We". People would call and say "Is Huy there?" and he would get so confused and be like "We? I'm the only one here!" It took about a month before we explained that we actually knew a guy named Huy and that was his number.

In my dorm I would get calls several times daily from Bank of America looking for the previous occupant of my room. After telling them hundreds of times and even asking to speak to the manager a few times (yes it took more than once) they finally got the message that she no longer lived there, I didn't know her and I had no freaking clue how to reach her.

At work we get calls for the Cancer center alot because Arlington Cancer comes right after Arlington Camera in the phone book, those aren't fun calls to take.

Son and Grandson of Phone Peeves: Free-Wheeling ADD Guy changing travel plans on a cell phone, with the window down, and other people in the car. They hand around the phone from person to person. They all lack listening skills and have problems staying on track with their plans.

No one, of course, can write anything down, because they're trying to make a last-minute flight. And all you can hear is static, wind, the radio, and other people talking. Just when you get to the part when you need to recap the very complex and confusing changes you've made, they drive over the hill and the call drops. And they call back and ask for you by name. And then the first guy changes something that affects everything else. They seem to find this amusing, judging from the backseat guffaws.

Hate that. Hate hate hate. With a hat on and a T-shirt that says "hate me because I'm a beauty queen."

Dealing with speakerphones - no love lost there either. I just keep saying "I'm sorry, I won't be able to hear you if you're on speakerphone, because it interferes with my headset." It almost always works, unless it's the annoying people from the carphone call, sitting around jabbering in the one guy's office after they get in.

The plural of "y'all" is "all y'all." As in, "I reckon all y'all oughta c'mon o'er here now."

ETA that I don't actually talk that way normally, but I went to school with some guys from southern Missouri, so I can translate.