Extension Roulette

[Dips]

This happened last week. Both Mark and Eugene were out of the office leaving me to handle 3 phone and all the emails again.

So things were getting backed up. People who got rolled into voice mail and left message did get called back ASAP. People who didn't leave messages eventually figured out that mashing redial repeatedly wasn't working and left a message or contacted us by alternate means.

Except for one lady. She apparently decided the route to go was to play Extension Roulette. That is, she dialed a random extension and left her message there hoping, perhaps, that somehow she would get a call back faster than if she left a message in the general mail box.

Of course, like real roulette, your chances of "winning" Extension Roulette are pretty bad.

She was no exception. The extension she selected was for our lunch/conference room phone. Her message sat there for 5 days before someone noticed the message light blinking while he was having his lunch and forwarded it to the general mailbox.

[sirwired]

I get that at my job... it's even stupider here. My employer has no less than three entire exchanges (30,000 numbers) in my area code. The likelihood that the person you reach will have the least freaking clue what to do with your message is fairly close to zero.

[MoonCat]

The extension she selected was for our lunch/conference room phone. Her message sat there for 5 days before someone noticed the message light blinking while he was having his lunch and forwarded it to the general mailbox

This made me snicker. I can just see the guy sitting there chomping a sandwich and he notices the blinking light: "WTF? Why is there a voicemail on this phone?"

[Syriilord]

This made me snicker. I can just see the guy sitting there chomping a sandwich and he notices the blinking light: "WTF? Why is there a voicemail on this phone?"

Mmmm. Mystery sammich. *drools*

[Caractacus_Potts]

I've actually played extension roulette myself!

Sometimes I have a simple question that can be handled by anyone in a contractors office but I only have a certain contacts extension. If I can't determine the receptionists general number or it goes to a general voice mailbox I'll start dialing extensions at random until I get a "live one" and get them to answer my question.

I would never consider leaving a message at a random mailbox though...that's just stupid. In my case the contractors are losing money every day they don't get my work back so everyone in the office is highly motivated to answer my questions, it's just a matter of getting a live person.

[Dips]

I can just see the guy sitting there chomping a sandwich and he notices the blinking light: "WTF? Why is there a voicemail on this phone?"

I actually did see it. My desk faces a window looking into the lunch/conference room. That's how it happened, except he was eating dinner leftovers.

I've actually played extension roulette myself! <snip>

In your situation your calls were quite a bit more important to the company than normal calls so doing that made sense and, well, it worked so why not?

In my situation I handled everyone first-come first-served. Her call was important, of course, but so was everyone else's. So honest-to-goodness the fastest way to get a response that week was to leave a message if she didn't get through to me at first. Because I returned calls to people to who left messages before taking a single new call. Even if a live co-worker had picked up and tried to transfer her to me it would have rolled into my personal voice mail box if I was helping another customer when she called. But least my voice mail isn't in the lunch room.

It sucked balls and made us look bad that the situation was even like that. It wasn't my choice that one guy on our sales staff went to a trade show and the other one took a vacation at the same time (leaving us with no sales staff). I just got stuck trying to play keep up and get everyone taken care of.

But that's more of a COC post.