I was in a meeting with my team. Akhil got a call. He received it and started talking by covering the mouthpiece of his smartphone with a hand and with a voice that he thought was a whisper. The rest of us stopped talking for Akhil to finish his call and join back.
Akhil: Good morning Ma’am…… yes…… yes… Ma’am, but you see it’s just a few years old….I agree ….Hmm, I think I still would like to wait, ma’am…. Sure ma’am…you too ma’am.
Our predictions about who he was talking to were proven wrong when we came to know that he was attending a cold call from a saleswoman – so is the mannerism of some people even for unsolicited calls. I have been on a wide range of emotions from pity to fury, at different times, to these cold callers. I would have been not very happy to get such a call in the middle of the meeting for sure and so Akhil’s patient conversation was amusing to me.
Our friend circle was good at making keen observations around us, during my first corporate job (more stories to follow). We had a great collection of our shared humor. One of them was – Levels of Telephone Manners. We had a role model also for each one. It was about how one responds to a ringing phone. Those were the days when caller & ID words weren’t used together in the same sentence.
Level 4: Pavani on the first ring, “Hello! This is Pavani here. May I know who is speaking?”
Level 3: Arul on the first ring, “Arul here!”
Level 2: Most of us on whatever ring but with no visible hurry, “Hello!”
Level 1: Srikanth on last possible ring, “ “
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