I am officially crap on the phone. During my working day I have to make phone calls on a fairly regular basis to other firms, courts, and so on. During EACH of these phone calls I will babble incoherently at least twice. I get flustered VERY easily and whilst panicking about not sounding professional I tend to stammer and forget what I'm saying. I generally sound like a schizophrenic mental patient who has suddenly found himself in charge of a phone and can now finally get in touch with those nice glowing robot unicorns that promised him peace and tranquillity in the future.
During my last call I began to get things wrong and my colleague had to interrupt me several times to correct my mistakes. This reduced me to a mess which sounded roughly like Woody Allen impersonating Hugh Grant after drinking 3 paddling pools of red bull. During this nonsense I am fairly sure the woman on the other end of the line was trying to explain important things to me but I blathered inanely over the top of her anyway.
I could hear her laughing as she put the phone down.
3 years ago
5 comments:
Am exactly the same - I HATE having to call up official sounding places and people. I have to write a quick script before calling sometimes if I'm really nervous, which makes me look like some kind of imbecile. My voice also goes kind of mumbly and bumbly like Mr. Bean. I like to talk face to face. It'd be much better if video phones had taken off...
I totally understand the script idea. I have tried this but often then sound like a speaking clock and repeatedly answer questions that haven't yet or will ever be asked.
My voice often decides to break again during these phonecalls which I hope sounds charmingly naive and innocent but probably more likely sounds mental and absurdly nervous.
Emails are just so much easier. The video phone would just make me self conscious about my appearance as well. Ideally I would just talk into my computer and it would relate my message in a safe, clear, calm monotone voice at the other end.
pre recorded greetings?
Excellent idea Sally. Perhaps I could convince a local celebrity like Dave Spikey or Gordon Burns to record some 'guest' greetings.
"Hello this is TV's Gordon Burns answering on behalf of Martin Higgins who has confidence issues and so cannot speak for himself.
If you are calling about the fax he mistakenly sent you which features a crudely drawn picture of a sexual encounter, press 1
If you are calling with regards to the inappropriate email in which he refers to himself as 'Captain Admin' and ends it with 'All my lovin', press 2
If you are calling to enquire as to whether the invoices you sent him 3 weeks ago have been processed and not carefully dropped down the back of a filing cabinet as you suspect, press 3"
This is a top class hilarious stuff :)
Helen Neely
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