Strange Phone Calls

I Hate

Some people suffer from verbal diarrhoea and often provide far too much information for the brain to handle. On the other had some people suffer from verbal constipation and it’s very difficult to figure out what they are on about.

I had a strange phone call today. The phone rang and I answered and said hello and the lady on the other end of the line didn’t say hello, didn’t introduce herself, didn’t say what company she was calling from, nothing - all she said was ‘I need an invoice’. I was slightly taken aback and asked ‘what kind of invoice?’ to which she replied ‘I need an invoice sent out’. I had no idea who this woman was or what invoice she was referring to and as the conversation progressed I just got increasinglty frustrated with the lack of information on her part.

When you call someone it’s simply polite to introduce yourself and say who you are, what company you are calling from and what the nature of your call is!

In the end, after asking her a lot of questions, I managed to find out what she was calling about. It was hard work though!

All she needed to do was call and say “Hi, I’m ’so-and-so’ from ’such-and-such company’ and I’m calling on behalf of ‘XYZ’ in order to chase an invoice which we need to pay.” - I would’ve responded to that very easily by asking which invoice, then checking the invoice number and amount etc etc. All she wanted was for me to send her a PDF copy of an invoice that had been faxed to her which she couldn’t decipher. Why couldn’t she say that in the first place???