Wednesday, January 17, 2007
10:38 a.m.

Caller – “My name is [some gayhole] and I’m with [who gives a shit, inc.] which is a new engineering firm in the area. I sent a letter to your company about a week and a half ago, not addressed to anyone in particular, but just to your company. I was just following up on that letter.”

Me - “Well, the best person for you to speak with is our division manager. He’s not in at this time, and I’m not sure if he is even the one who actually read the letter, but you would probably want to speak with him– “

Caller – “Ok, well we’re an engineering firm that provides [miscellaneous services] and [more shit that affects me none] and I’m aware that [my company name] provides these in-house, but I also know that there’s an overload as is common right now with all the firms in this area– “

Me – “Riiiiiiight. Well, [division manager] is definitely the best person for you to speak with. So if you’d like to leave him a message, I can transfer you…”

Caller - “Ok, great. I’ll go ahead and do that, thank you.”

Dude, do you hear yourself? Do I sound like a fucking detective? I’m a reluctant secretary. Like I’m going to track down the random person that probably has your letter buried in his inbox? With all due respect, your literary solicitation is really not our priority right now. That’s nice about your new business and all, but instead of sending a general form letter to everyone in the city, why not do a little research first, maybe visit our website and possibly obtain contact information there? There are several links that indicate who the key contacts are for each of the offices. If you are too dumb to efficiently navigate a website, perhaps you are too dumb to be an engineer. I just visited our website to ensure the accuracy of my information. Guess what, I found SIX NAMES you could have contacted directly to avoid sounding like an ignorant douchebag. Alternately, don’t you have little engineer friends in the industry that may have contact information for you to utilize? It’s really not hard. It’s called networking. You’re trying to promote a professional business, not selling tacos out of a truck. Why don’t you hand out neon flyers while you’re at it? Douche.

Not only did you strain the bounds of my accommodation limits, but you interrupted me to bore me with your endless and extremely unnecessary rehearsed spiel about your new company that I couldn’t care less about. Furthermore, you distracted me from the lovely graph that I’ve been creating, with sappy Easter basket colors, to display our staffing capabilities. More information that could probably be found ON OUR WEBSITE. Douche.

Oh, and I just got another one of those, “I don’t remember the name of the person that [manager's name] referred me to, but it was regarding a proposal for [street name] and [stupid building] involving a piece of land in front of [stupid building].” WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE? He can’t wait 30 fucking minutes until the manager returns? This bullshit has to be handled NOW? It’s that fucking urgent? That’s it, I’m on strike. Henceforth, I will pretend not to hear the phone. I will keep a running count of the calls I ignore. I honestly don’t know what I will have to write about once I leave this job.