Things To Do When Calling a Receptionist at a Business

For those who don't know, I'm a receptionist at a local company in Provo. All I do at work all day is answer phones and complain about how dumb the people calling are. So for those who might be new to the business of calling a company receptionist, here are a few tips that will help you to have a more successful experience (and make the receptionist much, much happier).

1. Know why you're calling. Many people call in, say their name, and then just wait expecting the receptionist to know why they're calling. We don't know why you're calling most of the time, so help us out a little bit.

2. Don't ask, "How you doing?" and not give time for an answer. If you're not going to wait for an answer, don't bother asking because then we both just end up talking over each other and then we feel dumb for answering your insincere question.

3. Don't call the receptionist "Sir" or "Ma'am". These are titles reserved for us to use on you when you piss us off, i.e. "Sir, please calm down." Also, you may accidentally use the wrong title for the gender of the receptionist and then that's just embarrassing.

4. Don't tell the receptionist your life story. If other businesses are anything like the one I work at, the receptionist will not be able to help you with the reason you are calling. The receptionist is just there to transfer you to the right person, not to fix your problems. So instead of telling the receptionist about how your cat died and then your liver failed and your life sucks so now you want to get a refund, just tell the receptionist you want a refund so they can get you to the right department.

5. If you are calling for a specific person, please remember that person's name. The receptionist might be able to find it for you, but they might not.

6. Don't take out your anger on the receptionist. Getting mad and yelling at the receptionist accomplishes absolutely nothing. If other companies are anything like mine, the receptionist has zero power over anything that would cause you to be angry. Any anger directed at them is misplaced, since they have no authority. You can yell at me all you want, but I still have no authority to give you a refund. (Also, the "Let me talk to your supervisor!" line generally doesn't work if you're talking to a receptionist. My supervisor manages how I answer the phones, my schedule, etc. she doesn't have any power over the things making you angry).

Those are just a few of the many things people do on the phone with me all day, I could probably go on all day airing my grievances, but I might just call up some company and get mad while telling the receptionist my life story instead.

I'm A Featured Blogger!!!

Well lawsy! For someone who never manages to blog, I'm not sure how I ended up on the 14 Days of Love over to the ever so popular blog Mmmboppin', but what I done (I think nepotism played a hand). At any rate, go check out how funny I am. I can't get over how funny I am sometimes. I mean, goodness, I am so funny. I'm a regular Billy Crystal.

Cut It Out: Heroes

In an effort to encourage me to blog more often, I am introducing a new recurring segment that allows me to do what I'm best at: complaining. That being said, I introduce you to Cut It Out, where I pay homage to something that once held my heart but somehow lost it along the way (such as Awkward Family Photos). For the first ever Cut It Out, I give you Heroes.

Heroes was once a very good show, but I can't seem to recall why. Mathematically it adds up to the kind of show I would normally like to watch (people with superpowers + watching them use said powers = good times), but something seems to be missing from the past few seasons, perhaps the complete absence of an interesting or unique plot.

I watched every episode last season thinking that maybe it was just a bad year and everything would be better. This year, I figured that it would be cancelled soon and I might as well watch it for lack of anything else to watch in the meantime. However, with the return of Lost, I don't need to waste time on lesser shows.

So I have decided to cut Heroes out of my life, much like depicted in the photo above (hope you enjoy my amateur editing skills). I would have put Hayden Panettiere in the photo, but then her little indestructible cheerleader head would have just grown back, and then where would we be?

Celebrity Hunt

Sometimes I think I am destined not to ever meet a real celebrity. I don't mean a good celebrity either, I just mean a celebrity. I'm not picky. Sure, I'd love a photo op with Dame Judi Dench, but I'd settle for Courtney Love if I saw her. Even with these low standards though, I've had no luck. Every year I go to Sundance hoping for a celebrity sighting, and every year I return unsuccessful. This year I even got in to a few industry parties. No luck.

A friend of mine met Lindsay Lohan at Forever 21 in Orem once (this was while she was in rehab in Utah). The closest thing I have to a celebrity encounter? Shaking Ambassador Greta Morris's hand at a 4th of July party in the Marshall Islands. Classy.

Another Success for Tim Burton?

Though I know this will disappoint some who know me, I am not actually that big of a Tim Burton fan. True, I have loved many of the movies he has produced or directed (namely The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride, and Big Fish), but he has also produced/directed movies that I simply didn't like (namely Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Sweeney Todd).

So suffice it to say when it was announced that Tim Burton was directing a new version of Alice in Wonderland I was slightly upset. Alice is one of the greatest stories ever written, and it has been remade SO MANY TIMES. Despite friends and family being very excited for his new Alice, I remained skeptical and bitter.

Then today I watched the new trailer for Burton's Alice, and my opinion changed completely. It seems odd to me that the very things I was worried about ruining the movie are actually the things that make me want to see it. I was worried that it would be nothing but flashy Burtonesque special effects, and according to this new trailer, it pretty much is. Those effects, however, look amazing, and I can't wait to see them. I was worried Burton would put his own spin on the Alice storyline and change too many things. It turns out that he's changing pretty much everything, and making it more of a "return" to wonderland, rather than just a replaying of the story EVERYONE already knows.

I'm finding myself increasingly welcoming of loose adaptations. One of the complaints I find most annoying when people complain about movies is "It was changed too much from the book. They didn't include *this* or *that*, so it just wasn't any good." Loyalty to the book should NEVER be the main criteria for film critique. The challenge of film adaptation is to produce a work that can stand on its own, separate from the book it came from. I can't help but find myself intrigued by this new adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, and I can hardly wait to see it. I hope it is just as good as this trailer makes it seem.

To Misquote Nixon, "I Am Not A Cook!"

I've always figured that I would be a good cook. I mean, when I lived at home, I always loved it when I was allowed to just "get my own dinner" and make whatever I wanted. I always did fine, and I never went hungry. Until recently, however, I wasn't aware that I wasn't really cooking. I was opening cans or pre-prepared meals and heating them. I really don't have any skills in the kitchen.

Don't get me wrong, I can follow a recipe perfectly fine. If I am given a good recipe, I can keep from messing it up. What I lack is the intuition to just mix something up without a recipe (also the intuition to know when I need to do things the recipe forgot to include).

Also, I have a hard time cooking meat. I like to blame it on colorblindness since I really can't for the life of me tell whether the meat is still pink or not, but I'm sure I could work around that if I tried.

I can't keep eating ramen and fast food forever though, and I can't make Elston always do the cooking, so I need to get some practice. For this reason, I am using my next paycheck to buy The Joy of Cooking: 75th Anniversary Edition so I can practice cooking from recipes that have been tried and tested for 75 years.

I found this book in Borders on a special display a few weeks ago and I've been fantasizing about it since. I don't know why I want it so bad. I think I like the fact that it basically looks like a dictionary. There is nothing fancy about the book; it is just recipes. No flashy descriptions of why I'll love the recipes, no fancy photos to entice me, just recipes. No cutesy font or Food Networky cover, just plain old recipes. I'm excited.

Pumpkin Carving!

It's that time again. Time for pumpkin carving! Last year I went for a political pumpkin and we got Barack Obama:



This year I decided to put politics aside and go religious, with a nice Thomas S. Monson pumpkin:



He was kind of tricky, but mostly because my pumpkin had very thick skin, and refused to cut all the way through sometimes.

Here are the rest of the pumpkins:


Top (L to R): Jarrett, Austin
Middle (L to R): Kanawai, Cam
Bottom (L to R): Dave, Elston

Ingrid Michaelson Concert

Last Saturday Elston, Austin, and I ventured to Salt Lake for the Ingrid Michaelson Concert at In The Venue.

Before the concert, we ate with Dave, Ginger, and Dennis at Cafe Trio. Our food was incredibly good. Everyone got something that everyone else liked. I had a hard time deciding whose food was the best.

When we arrived at the venue, the line had already gone around the corner and was quite far down the block. We got in line as soon as possible and found ourselves behind a group of 20-something girls and a possibly 40-something mom looking lady who looked like an older Kristin Chenoweth. One of the girls in front of us had really nice looking hair, but upon further inspection, her weave was showing. Which led us to take the only good photo we took that evening.

If you look closely, you can see the weave sewn onto her hair. Not pretty.

The hardest part of concerts for Elston is the waiting. There is a lot of waiting. You wait in line to get in the building. Once in the building you wait for the opening act. After the opening act you wait for the headliner. It's a very tedious process, and one which Elston doesn't tolerate well. I find it easy to distract myself by people watching and daydreaming about what I would do if I had superpowers, but Elston can't be satisfied by that. It especially didn't help that the opening act, Matthew Perryman Jones was not exactly a big crowd pleaser. Austin and I agreed that we would like to listen to his songs sometimes, but not for an extended period of time while standing in a crowd sweating profusely from forehead, armpits, and crotch. All of this prompted several angry facebook status updates from Elston and a concerned look on my face as I wondered about Elston's emotional well-being.

Once the show started though, all boredom vanished. Ingrid is most definitely a crowd pleaser. She knows how to keep the crowd engaged and involved. She flattered us by saying we were the best crowd she'd ever had and she was impressed that we could sing along, etc. She encouraged us to clap in certain parts, sing in certain parts, shout in certain parts, and do spirit fingers in certain parts. She told cute little stories to make the songs relatable. While I loved both concerts I've been to previously (Lily Allen and Regina Spektor) I think Ingrid put on the most entertaining one.

I found a video on YouTube that someone took of one of her encore songs at the concert. I tried taking pictures and the lighting was bad, so I didn't even try to take video, so this will have to do:


And here are a few of my favorite Ingrid songs, purely for your enjoyment:

"Be OK"


"You And I"


"Die Alone"

And Now He's Dead For Real (In Memorium, Sir Leicester Pennyapple Williams)

Having previously escaped death, Sir Leicester Pennyapple Williams finally returned to his maker on the evening of October the 19th. Burial services are currently being arranged, and the mourning process has begun. To read the obituary from the previous false assumption of his death, go here. Leicester will be missed by all who knew him, especially those who cared for him in his later years. Goodbye, Sir Leicester. Wherever you are now, please try to venture out of the cage once in a while.

My Top Model Makeover

Life has been going a mile a minute ever since I won Ailinglaplap Kibwe Lap's Next Top Model. I've been touring the fashion capitals of the world, stunning with them with my gorgeous looks and signature walk. The best part of being a top model though is getting photoshopped to look even more beautiful (if that's even possible for me). I was lucky enough to have my photoshopping done by one Dave Hansen. Please be in awe of his skills.