Telephone Etiquette

What is it that makes it so obvious that you're talking to a young person when you encounter one on the phone? I'm not talking about really little kids -- I mean someone who answers the phone for a business, yet sounds like Moon Zappa after suffering from a stroke? Seriously, if you own a business, you really ought to call in once in a while to see whether you can understand a word that's being said.

I made a call yesterday to get some information about a local business I was considering patronizing. The call was taken by a young woman, and even though I knew the name of the business, I don't think I heard it at all within the string of high-speed gibberish with which she answered the phone. I had no idea what she had said. I gave her a brief synopsis of what I wanted and she put me on hold. About 5 minutes later she came back on with what sounded like an identical greeting to the original unintelligible mishmash. I got the impression that she thought I was a new caller, despite having been on hold for so long.

This time I slowly explained my query in more detail, and she eventually did attempt to actually provide some useful information. Her delivery was peppered with more instances of "um", "ya know" and "like" than I would expect from someone representing a large company such as this, but at least I could understand her words now. But she apparently had a limited set of customer responses to read from, because her answers didn't exactly match my questions, and would repeat themselves each time I tried a different approach to get through to her. It didn't take long before I simply accepted the fact that I'd get nowhere with her, so I said goodbye and hung up, determined to try again at a different time...when someone else (someone older) might answer the phone.

Please don't interpret my complaints here as a generic condemnation of all the youth of America. I'm sure that one or two people under 30 are completely capable of articulate phone speech. And I have no personal problem at all with those who aren't -- I'm just asking businesses to not assign those particular individuals to handle phone calls. I'm not unreasonable, am I?

What do you mean "No, you're just old and curmudgeony"? Hey, c'mon. That wasn't a very nice thing to say. Why, in my day, a whippersnapper who made a comment like that would receive a nice long session out in the woodshed. People had manners back then, and by gum...

Wait, I'm doing it again, aren't I? Sigh.

I think I'll just go take a nap. You have my permission to ignore any senility-fueled ranting you encounter for the rest of the week. Thank you for your continued patronage, and have a great day!