Me: Can I tell her who's calling?And I go back to helping the client, which is--note this very carefully--MY FUCKING JOB.
Caller: I'm a customer.
Me: All right; can I tell her who's calling?
Caller: *click*
Me: Guess it's not that damned important.
A while later [coworker] asks me if someone had called her, and I told her that was so, but the other party had hung up.
And she proceeded to tell me that was her kid and that I was wrong for not telling her, because what if it was an emergency? (See post title.)
How did she know it was her kid? The kid had called her cell phone first. Why didn't she answer it? "I was working."
...
WHAT IN THE BLUE FUCKING BLAZES DO YOU THINK I WAS DOING??
That just infuriated me. As if I were just standing around with my thumb up my ass or something. If I'm in the middle of helping a client and I take a call, and the caller hangs up after I ask a perfectly reasonable question, I assume it's not that damned important. I am certainly not going to interrupt what I'm doing and run to find [coworker] and tell her, "Hey, you had a phone call, but they hung up when I asked who it was." Besides, if I had a dollar for every time I'd told someone they had a phone call, and got attitude from them when I told them I didn't know who it was--shit, I could buy the place.
If instead of hanging up on me the kid had said, "Yeah, [coworker] is my mother and I'm trying to reach her," of course I would have told her that her kid was on the line. I don't think anyone would condemn any parent if a kid called them at work, particularly for an emergency. (If it's not an emergency, why are we even having this conversation? So it took a little longer for your kid to contact you for a non-emergency--this is not my fault or my problem.)
Or--here's an idea!--instead of leaving your phone on the workbench, hooked to a set of speakers so you can listen to shitmusic, keep your phone on you so you know when it's ringing and can answer calls from your kids.
It is, however, perfectly reasonable for a person to assume that when a caller hangs up on you, whatever he's calling about isn't that important to him.
Besides which, when answering a customer call, it's pretty common to get some idea of why they're calling so you can tell the recipient, "Hey, Joe Blow is calling about his laptop." Sometimes--I realize this is a leap for some people out there--sometimes, I can actually answer such questions myself without transferring the call to someone else! It's one facet of my job, you know, to be the face of the precinct and handle client questions, you know?
[Coworker] was one of the most vocal critics, in my early days, about how I didn't answer the phone (because I was learning the job and didn't know everything, for fuck's sake!) yet when I do answer the phone the way I'm supposed to, now suddenly I'm not doing it right if I donn't drop what I'm doing to run to the back and tell her that she has a phone call.
No. No.
I asked a perfectly reasonable question. The caller refused to identify himself any further than saying "I'm a customer", and hung up on me when I repeated my perfectly reasonable question. I don't think it's wrong of me to ask a question like that, especially when I've previously gotten so much attitude from my coworkers over not asking such questions.
Does [coworker] come to me and say, "Hey, that was actually my kid, and I told him to say he was a customer"? Oh hell no. She just tells me I'm doing it wrong, because even if a real customer doesn't want to identify himself (why the fuck would that be?) I should transfer the call.
Please note that I didn't refuse to do anything. The brat hung up on me first. Maybe she should tell her brats not to hang up on people. You think?
What it comes down to is yet another case of "YOU'RE DOING IT ALL WRONG", and I am really, honestly fucking tired of this kind of horseshit.