Adventures in Telephony

(1) At work yesterday, called an equivalent Government Agency in another city, a small one, and the provided contact number was actually for the agency director, who happened to be sitting in his office with exactly the people I needed to talk to, having exactly the conversation I had wanted to have. This did not go well. I was on the phone for an hour with some extremely friendly Iowans who were really curious about lots of things I couldn't really answer because (among other reasons) I frankly hadn't really done my homework. I'd gotten complacent after a series of eventless calls where I asked my question and was promised a relevant fax in return, so that this time around I neglected to check our own management software to see what the deal was with the case in question, assuming it was as cut and dried as the others. It was not. I hemmed and hawed and sounded rather foolish, I fear. But the Iowans, being - I take it - Iowan, were extremely nice about the whole thing, and I got to drop some "this is how we do it in the big city, where our program serves 100x as many people as yours does" knowledge on them. Said knowledge being, essentially: "Honestly, we have so many clients that our resources don't really allow us to be quite so investigative or diligent."

(2) At another agency I was transferred four times in order to reach the person I needed to talk to, who let me pose my question and appeared on the verge of answering it before deciding that, hey now, she didn't actually have any way of knowing I was who I said I was, and could I prove it? This threw me off rather a lot, so I took her suggestion of faxing her something with an official coversheet, and I agreed. Unfortunately, our coversheet isn't actually terribly official, so I didn't hear back from her. My boss - and I should have thought of this myself - suggested (after much laughter) that I should email her, because maybe she wouldn't assume I'd spoofed a domain name. This was successful.

(3) Today I called what I can only assume was a very small agency, and received a recorded message that ran as follows: "Thank you for calling the [Local Government Agency]. Unfortunately, we are not able to answer your call at this time. Our hours of operation are [a window within which I was definitely calling]. Please try again later." This is unprecedented. I don't care how small they are, I'll forgive them not having a phone tree or IVR, but they don't have voicemail?

(4) This evening I was in a slightly frazzled mood, my home phone rang, I answered it, a guy with a Mexican accent informed me that he was calling from a survey company in Hollywood, and I promise I usually say something like "Sorry, I'm not interested," or "I don't have time, and a good time to call back would be, well, I'd rather you didn't," but I just hung up without saying anything. Five seconds later my phone rang again. Coincidence, right? No - same guy. Now I'm a little annoyed (well, more so), and I hang up again without notification. I'm walking away when the phone rings again, and I pick it up and say "Hello?" only to have whomever called me hang up on me. And then my phone rang again, and I picked it up without saying anything, and it instantly went to dial tone. And then in the next few minutes there were three occasions where it rang only once, and I didn't answer it. I've been told that random rings can be the result of electrical spikes in the phone grid, but I'd rather think that the telemarketer guy, for whom I do feel some level of intrinsic sympathy (he didn't draw up the business model, and everybody's got to eat) was angered at my rudeness and taking out his frustrations on me. Sorry, ese.