Office phone calls: Am I being unreasonable?

[Tuumble]

I had a situation today that has cropped up many times over the past few months and it is beginning to really irk me. Basically we have a process in our office whereby my department takes all the incoming calls in rotation as most would be sales calls but that is far from universally the case. As a guess about two thirds are relevant to us specifically - the rest are for other departments and staff.

The phone system works in a group log-in system so to be part of this loop of incoming calls you have to log-in to the group. The IT department in particular don't do this so any calls for them has to come through us first.

That doesn't bother me as such as we are hardly inundated but I get really fed up having to give people the brush off because they don't want to speak to a caller even when asked for by name. Why should I do their dirty work?

I would like a rule that if a person is asked for by name they should take the call even if it is to ask the salesman to not call again. The caller doesn't want to speak to me and it just makes sense that there is clarity between them and the department they want to speak to so they do not call again in future.

It can't give a very good impression to outsiders and I don't see why I get the earache from an unhappy caller when the call is nothing to do with me or my department.

In the example today I had a mild argument with a colleague because he didn't want to speak to someone because he didn't recognise the name given and assumed it was a sales call for IT equipment. He said he was busy and refused to take it. Excuse me? I'm busy too! Dealing with call for another person in another department!

Am I being unreasonable in expecting them to deal with their own calls?

[Lauxa]

You are irritated with the situation, and by reacting with irritation you lose your power. Accept your situation and you gain your power.

There are probably things you can do that will have the effect of making the situation closer to what you would desire, but you cannot access them while you are stuck in being upset about the behavior of someone else. For instance, when you get a call for the IT department you could ask the caller for what the call is regarding and if it is a sales call and the IT guy doesn't want to talk to the salesman, you could ask him if he would like you to ask the salesman to call back later or to stop calling.

This may not be a good solution at all, but making your happiness dependent on the actions of other people is unreasonable.

[{aspiring_to_clarity}]

I wonder, is the volume of calls such that it would be worthwile to hire a receptionist? Having one central person taking calls and directing them seems to be a solid plan. In addition, a good receptionist is skilled at handling tricky calls with aplomb. It seems like it would be a good option to present to the higher-ups since it would be relatively cheap compared to the work-hours wasted by all of you taking time out of your job to answer phones. The reception person could also have other duties to free up those working on important projects.

In any case, I agree with Lauxa about the mindset to get into around this.

Good luck.

[Brutha]

What departement are you in?
Whether it's your job to handle callers depends large on the kind of job that you do.