Wrong Numbers- a PSA

I spend all day taking wrong number phone calls for Surgical Associates, or Dr. Shores, of whom I am neither. Here is a tutorial of what not to do when you accidentally call the wrong number. Do not act like these people.

First, do not keep calling wondering if I have morphed into the doctor's office. I have not. That does not mean I will not want to cut you before it is all over.

For some reason, calling the wrong number and getting me really pisses people off. I do not know what they are so mad about, I am the one with tennis elbow over it. First of all, when I answer the telephone saying "Hello?" instead of "Surgical Associates", you should consider that your heads up that you have the wrong number. It does no good to carry on for ten minutes about it. I still will not be her and cannot amputate your anything, I do not care who told you to call this number.

I get the strangest reactions. The most common is people who argue with me about whether I am the aforementioned surgeon. I am pretty sure I know what I am and am not, and if I am confused, I can look at my paycheck from the government, who knows full well I am not a surgeon.

The next most common is people who ask me, after I say I am not the surgeon's office, is "well, is this ###-####?" Yes, it is. That does not magically turn me into a surgeon.

THEN, I get--"What is her number then?" How the hell should I know, I do not need a surgeon. Well, I might, but I am not ready to call one yet.

Another interesting part is that I get messages from people about their appointments they are going to miss, or need to schedule. First, I ahve to go through this long drawn out process of 37 different codes to get to my voicemail, by which time I usually need a nap. Then I get to the messages and they are not even for me! They quite often include a litany of body descriptions that I could do without, especially after lunch.

Now what part of the voicemail outgoing message do they not get about the only two words on it--my first and last name. Nowhere in there is there any talk about Surgical Associates. I am confident that the criminal justice system does not need to know or talk about your kidney stones or what came out of where in order to get through the day.

OH MY GOD. I just got TWO phone calls in a row for the "doctor's office." Thirty seconds apart. Still not the doctor's office. And from the accent, I would lay odds that was another doctor calling her.

This makes me crazy. Crazy I tell you. To top it off, every other month, I get in trouble with my boss for being on the phone too much--last month, I had something like 120 minutes of local calls. Break that down to the 20 days I worked probably, it is an average of 6 minutes a day. Let's ignore the fact that a person who is free to walk around the countryside and is considered a professional by most of the world ought to be allowed to talk on the phone for 6 minutes a day without consternation- and that at least 80% of those calls are wrong numbers for Dr Shores and you will see why this next thing is so irritating to me.