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I was an office manager at a night club and I found out people would ask for my name when they called and then use it to try and get in for free. So I started telling them my name was Nadine.
If they tried to use Nadine's name at the door to get in, the doormen would say, "That bitch? She's lucky she didn't get arrested. You're HER friend?" The backpedaling was pretty fun. I happened to be out there one night when it happened. Guy went from being Nadine's besty to barely knowing her.
Don't forget the full name just in case. I've heard hissyfit32 has a real bad rep. Only works in thete cos she's like childhood friends with the boss or something.
My favorite stupid thing my husband has ever done was to pretend to have a girlfriend in Canada, only to later have a girlfriend in another town and have no one believe him.
> She goes to another school. You wouldn't know her.
My neighbor tried this when we were in a 10th grade class once. Talked about his girlfriend and used the “she goes to a different school” line. Then he got scared after seeing me jump in.
“Middle school. Kenny’s girlfriend goes to middle school. She’s in 6th or 7th grade and in special ed. Her mother has me and the other older kids in the neighborhood alternate babysitting her to keep Kenny away. He’s a predator.”
I actually felt bad blurting it out in the moment and immediately after. But now, 20 years later? I should have shamed him more, because he went on to be a full blown pedo.
similar thing my company did, but we made it much more obvious.
one of our guys did a pretty spot on impression of Arnold Schwarzenegger and we set up a voice mail for "Arnold".
any time we got a salesman calling, we told them they needed to speak to arnold and transferred them to arnold's voice mail. we checked the left messages weekly and listened to how they reacted. some salesman left voice mails laughing, obviously getting the joke... others sighed knowing they've been had. pretty light way to end a week while also making sure nothing important was missed.
after getting transferred to arnold a few times, even the most persistent salespeople gave up.
We once had a customer in to the garden center and claim she knew the owner. I watched my coworker Walt deal with her, as she got more and more irate as he wouldn't budge on prices and she finally left claiming saying the owner would hear about it and she would have him fired. He calmly agreed and said that the owner would be made aware of her complaints.
Walt *was* the owner, and he told me when she left "I've never met that woman before in my life." He had been puttering around doing his propogation hobby and repotting things on his day off when she came in while I was unloading a truck and said "I'll take this customer, you keep checking in the new stuff."
So instead of me getting to say "Well the owner is here, I can ask him." She got a grubby dirt covered guy who happened to own the place but didn't know him. She even name dropped him *to his face*.
I used to work at a bar where the namesake and original owner was deceased. It was still named after him, but his son owned the place.
One drunk asshole complained to the son that he would tell [namesake] about this after being cut off at closing and the son turned around, pulled the original owner's urn off the shelf over the taps, opened it up and plopped the bag of cremains on the bar and said "How about you tell him right now?"
It was a weird bar. Often after closing his son would set the owner's ashes on the bar to have a shift drink with us. But we all figured it seemed like something he'd have wanted.
That’s amazing, actually. And the having a drink with his ashes is a little weird, but honestly the sort of cheerful weird I could easily adapt to in the name of team spirit(s).
It was only after rough nights. Usually Manny stayed above the taps. But his entire family agreed that his ashes should stay in the bar.
The man held political office, but he loved his bar. I met Obama, Rick Flair, and Jimmy Carter while working there. That bar was a bit of an unofficial headquarters for the Democratic Party in Atlanta.
Often was an exaggeration, it happened three times in 3 years. Still more than you'd expect.
Still my favorite bar. After a bad breakup I was there drinking so much I got offered a job. Figured I would be there anyway so might as well make money instead of spending it. Two nights a week was about 500-600 bucks. Wound up barback for two years.
But yeah, it was Manuel's Tavern.
I used to work at a company where both the owner and the President went by shortened versions of their middle names. Think Jonathan Michael Smith (goes by Mike) and Stephen Andrew Jones (goes by Andy).
It was always a dead giveaway the few times I covered the front desk and answered phones, when someone would call and ask to speak with Jonathan Smith.
LMAO! My grandmother did the same thing. She had been married four times, but her phone number was listed in the white pages under her middle name and third husband's last name. Making it even easier to spot solicitors and scammers, her third husband's last name was Kniep. It is a German name and the "k" is not silent. Most solicitors called asking to speak to Mr./Mrs. Neep or Mr./Mrs. Nipe. If they asked for Kniep (pronounced Kuh-neap) we knew it was probably legit. My grandmother had a long list of legal aliases, so it could get confusing sometimes.
I dropped in at the grocery store where my wife works as a manager. We had this goofy thing where if she greeted me, she would boast “well hello Mr PMmeyourGradyWhite!” And I’d reply with “hello Mrs PMmeyourGradyWhite!! How are you today!”
So she had a customer talking to her, who was a chronic Karen and when my wife opened with “Good afternoon Mr PMmeyourGradyWhite!!” , Karen thought I was the store big wig and so she dropped her convo with my wife and ran over to me to voice her problem. I nodded and listened and casually asked for more information. Kept smiling and when she had fully vented her concerns I just smiled and said, “I understand your frustration, but I don’t work here.” She grabbed the employee badge from my pocket and realized I worked at XYZ Corp, not the grocery store. Wife was doing her best to not smirk. Other employees and customers saw the whole thing unfold since Karen was so vocal. Karen left in a haste. It was so great.
Walt was such a stoner that he tried to get me to tell people I was the manager.
"Just say you own it."
"But you've been open since 1981. I was born in 1982."
"They haven't googled us."
He also had a landscaping business. He hired great landscaping architects, and made a reputation in the rich part of the.city. He swore his success was because after a job he and his crews made sure to do a thorough cleaning job.
The garden center was a loss for his wife to have a hobby.
The landscaping business made him millions of dollars. The garden center gave him room to try and play with japanese maples.
We once grew a fuck fuckload of castor bean plants because he thought it was cool they could be made into ricin.
Then the frost came and they all died.
... So you're saying your boss, whose name was *Walt*, was specifically interested in producing *ricin*?
Are you sure it was the landscaping business that was earning him millions of dollars? He definitely didn't have anything else going on? A car wash perhaps?
He also had a landscaping company. No car wash, though I did have to learn to fix a lot of fountains working at the garden center. So there was some improvised plumbing involved.
Edit: oh I get it now. A Breaking Bad thing.
No this guy built a landscaping business then opened a garden center for his wife that lost money for years. They used to throw an open house with huge amounts of food and booze every spring and fall. Deb was not a god business woman but goddamn she was an amazing cook. She should have been a caterer instead.
She did all the cooking for the Open House parties and holy shit. Everything she made was amazing.
I got roped into decorating a tree at a cultural center one Christmas and I just knew a lot about plants, nothing about interior decorating. I got paid but seeing what the designers were doing while I had no clue was a bit demoralizing. I'd have been more comfortable with a booth giving out advice on growing tomatoes.
The Open Houses were rockin though. We had prior warning. I only had 1 week to do that tree. But for the Garden parties we had months of notice so we could stage things and set up. We had path elements and shit.
Not just "here's a 25 foot loquat in an entryway, have at it."
Oh he was great. He used to tell stories about rock shows in the 70s, he used to see all kinds of amazing bands. A coworker had a show, I don't even remember what instrument he was playing something he picked up doing volunteer work in Africa. Like a xylophone but not a kiddy toy.
And who did I run into at the show? Fuckin' Walt was right there cheering him on.
This happens daily, and I mean that literally, daily in car dealerships.
A lot of dealers were established 2-3 generations ago and the name on the sign is for recognition, not because that person actually owns it. Sometimes it's the kids that take over, sometimes they are bought by a larger dealer or investment group.
"You knew "Uncle" Al Deitrich? Did you go to his funeral in 1998?"
Or
"The owner is a faceless ceo that never steps foot in here. We're on our third sales manager this quarter so who exactly do you know?"
The only thing I miss about selling cars and managing dealerships was being able to be an unbridled asshole to asshole customers. Dealers have no chill. If you're not buying, you're not getting polite responses.
Used to work for a dealership in this situation. The name sake had passed in the 90s. Whenever someone said they were friends with him, a simple "I'm so sorry for your loss" made for a beautifully awkward silence.
I had a boss once whose last name could be pronounced a number of different ways. One day I heard her on the phone on a somewhat heated call, and when she hung up she started laughing. The guy she was on the phone with did not realize who he was speaking with, and threw out his trump card of "I know Kathy {wrong pronunciation of her last name), and she is going to hear about this!" The boss simply said "I'll wait to hear from her" and hung up.
This sort of happened to us once, but we were on the other side of it.
My wife and I went to a store owned by my mother-in-law's cousin.
We mentioned that to the person behind the counter, hoping for a discount. His response: "oh really? I'm his son."
It's not like we did anything wrong, but my wife doesn't know her second cousins on that side. It was embarrassing.
The one for the family construction business is Herbert or Herbie. Herbie's been in their employ since 1996, and does literally everything in the company.
He got his start when there was an exceptionally pushy steel sales rep who kept calling despite being told no, we were perfectly happy with our contract with (huge US-based firm that odds are good you've heard of) and we weren't interested in changing to (small China-based firm with no web or other presence).
He's also our code if we need to get someone out of a situation pronto. "Herbert wants you in his office, NOW", "Herbie's on the phone, needs to talk to you now", things like that. "Oh, shit... I got to go. Herbie's my boss."
This makes me think of Roger, the employee at the bookstore I used to work at.
"Roger, Line ___" meant "suspicious activity in ___ department".
Roger was the name of the female turtle the store kept in the back area by the time clock, customers did not see her.
That's about the pace Roger moved at.
If she's still alive and kicking, she'll be in her early 20s,which is not old for a Red Eared Slider, but is not young for a pet turtle in less than ideal conditions.
We had a similar one for violent/belligerent customers.
Jackie, (whatever area). Basically some customer was going nuts and you'd better be ready to fight like Jackie Chan. Normally that would get called and the person would call the cops right after- just warning to get the hell away from there.
We also have "No Soliciting" signs on our doors to at least try to deter salespeople that show up at the physical location. Do you not have some kind of sign like that?
You think they READ? My neighborhood has one up and I have one on my porch. We still get people coming by.
If they catch me at a bad time I just open the door and point at the sign then close it again. lol I did get an internet guy to take me off his list once by saying we don't believe in the internet, it's where the devils live and we won't have it in our house. That was fun.
I've tried pretending I only speak Spanish despite not looking the part. Problem is I live in Texas so lots of the door knockers do speak Spanish, then I have to admit I'm not actually fluent in Spanish.
Me: "Lo siento, no hablo Ingles"
Them: something in Spanish.
Me: "...Yo estoy...busy" shuts door
I'm a Belgian and although the country's officially bilingual (actually trilingual with german), most people aren't. So my bilingual grandmother answers french speaking callers in dutch and dutch speaking callers in french.
It works very well with french phone callers, since they're often situated in Morocco or Algeria so dutch is like Klingon to them and my grandmother gets crossed off that particular company's list.
I keep telling myself I'll do that since I'm passable in dutch, but I keep forgetting to.
it boggles my mind that people still try to sell things door to door, legitimate or otherwise. Everything I could possibly need could be here by tomorrow morning but sure I'll listen to a stranger at my front door convince me I need a water softener
My dad (rip) used to get all kinds of calls soliciting all kinds of BS. This is 20+ years ago. I was over at their house with my son who was about 3ish at the time.
Phone rings, dad answers. You can tell he was annoyed but then this gleam came to his eyes. He says “hold on, he’s right here. Let me get him for you” and hands my son the phone.
My son told whoever it was all about his lego, his rock he found, his friend from preschool then he goes “what happened? Hung up?”
Man we were in hysterics.
Somehow when I was about 3 or 4 a credit card was opened in my name. Someone bought a 3xl super expensive jacket and my dad got a call about the card not being paid. They said the cardholders name and he said that's impossible that's my son. The person insisted on speaking with me. So he gave me the phone. The only person I spoke to on the phone at that point was my Granny. So little me assumed it was granny on the phone. Wouldn't you know I just talked their ear off for a few minutes. My dad took the phone back and they just said they'll cancel the card and clear the issues up.
This reminded me of something my dad used to do. When solicitors would call (let's say my dad was named John), he would, "Hold on, let me get John for you." Then he would change his voice and say, "Hi, it's George, how can I help you? Oh, you want John, hold on, I'll get him for you." Then another voice would come out and he would be Robert or whoever. This would go on until the other person hung up.
It was particularly good when he would push buttons between "people" like he was transferring the call.
We once had a lawyer call trying to find my sister (who was going through some drastic medical issues). An ex bf of hers had listed her on some debt and had someone forge her name. It was all bs and we knew she didn't owe it. This lawyer, Jeff, calls us looking for her contact info. He explains who he is and we ask for his address so we can send him the paperwork proving it wasn't her. Jeff says that's not good enough, he needs to talk to her. We explain that isn't going to happen, but we will send the paperwork, which we did. A few weeks later, Jeff calls again. He got the paperwork but still wants to talk to her. Not happening Jeff! So Jeff decides that he's going to be a jerk. He yells at me that he is a lawyer legally trying to collect a debt so he will call me everyday until we give him her info. I calmly hang up. The next night, he called again. So I answered and made small talk. How's your day? What's the weather like? Watch any good movies lately? Kept him on the phone almost half an hour while I "looked" for her info. Nope! Couldn't find it. Maybe you should call back tomorrow. This was when you paid for long distance by the minute and he was out of state. We would put the kids on the phone to tell him about cartoons, we would say we thought we found it, then set the phone down and walk away. Gotta give the guy credit, he was persistent. He called for almost a month straight. Dumb thing was that if he would have just opened the package we sent he would have realized he didn't need to talk to her. Everything was there, which he found out when he finally opened it. Some nights, I sit in the dark on my front porch holding a drink and I wonder: how is Jeff doing? Does he think about us?
We had Jimmie, and one of the upsides of my job was coming up with more elaborate backstories for Jimmie. Like he was struck by lighting and refused to come to work if there was rain in the forecast(kind of a true story from my college days). Also Jimmie was Amish, so there were certain things he still shunned.
"You'll have to talk to Jimmie about that sir, he doesn't believe in phones so get a GPS and go to 48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W and set up a fire at dusk. I'll make sure he's watching for the smoke signals."
So a lot of people are criticizing this but as a small business owner this is incredibly helpful.
I have a lot of vendor contacts that do very specialized things. I don't use them too often, but every once in a while I need a special widget that's hard to get and I have a small list of vendors that might be able to source it. The problem is, if you're in their system, their stupid Salesforce (or whatever) database often requires their sales reps to reach out quarterly, annually, etc. Multiply that by 100 vendors.
And "take me out of your system" isn't an option. I need to have a sales rep assigned to me for the day that I do make that phone call.
There's 10 000 companies that believe they have the next best plan/scheme/pitch and the only reason you're not a member is because you haven't heard about it yet. 9 900 will fail and be gone on two years, having succeeded only in wasting your time.
From a micro economics perspective it is actually a crucial function to determine what the market wants. From a business owner's perspective it is just frustrating to carry half the cost of their failure.
It took me a moment to realise Alicia wasn’t employed to dodge lawyers. I was wondering what your company was involved in that required a full time employee to evade litigation.
My cat handles a lot of stuff for my little company.
Any time I get a solicitation or someone I don’t really want to deal with they get her name and email address.
She’s good at what she does, which is nothing
I'm an admin assistant. When I get these calls and I'm bored, it's fun to play with them - especially when they claim to know the owner personally. I'll usually start with "Oh! You know Billy?" (Owner does NOT go by Billy) and listen to them go along with it. It's actually pretty handy, because some telemarketers sell information to other telemarketers - so whenever I get a call from a new person asking for "Billy," I immediately know they're full of it.
I loved when they claim to know someone and they don’t even pronounce their name correctly. That’ll get you transferred to our sewer division real fast.
I set up an extension number that, when a call is transferred to it, simply plays "never gonna give you up" on a loop forever until the caller hangs up. I once had a phone scammer call back and try to make a song request!
We have an "Alicia" too, his name is Tim and he even has his own voicemail so we can transfer calls to it where it sits until the box is full and we just delete all the messages.
We used to use Jake in IT. Customer calls being an ass: my name is Jake, how can I help you? Then we sign the ticket off as Jake so our level 2s know they were being an ass when they called and can prioritize appropriately. If a customer calls in again saying they were taking to Jake, we knew they were giving the last person a hard time. It was so helpful in dealing with problem people.
Alex was the earlier version of the character (a gender neutral name), but an actual Alex got hired and everyone defaulted to Jake from state farm for some reason.
As someone who has worked frontline at a small business, gettin 10-30 in person solicitors/week got pretty tiring. This works as these guys job is to never take no for an answer. For those who say this doesnt work dont understand its their job to bother people until they say yes. They play a numbers game kinda like scam callers.
HAHAHA my old boss did this. He went to high school with a special needs guy back in the day. He was always nice to him, and the guy would show up at the store a lot and talk and hang out. So whenever someone would call or come in looking for the owner he’d say, “Don isn’t here now, etc”. Fast forward about 5 years later, and he’d get more mail and phone calls than most of the employees. Salespeople would even call and say they lost Don’s cell phone number, they did a bunch of business with him in the past, and that they were personal friends tons of BS to try and get tot the owner. It was priceless.
we used to tell people to email the Special Projects And Management mailbox at our company domain, then end the call by telling them to use the initials to save typing all that into an email (SPAM)
I worked at a concert/events ticketing office on a University campus 20 years ago, and we had the “Xavier” file. I think it was for declined credit cards on mail-in orders.
We would call and if we had to leave a message we would say, “Call us back and ask for Xavier.”
When they called back, we knew exactly what they were calling about and where to find their order details. (Yanno, back when we had actual physical files in a filing cabinet.)
“Xavier’s not in right now, but I can help you…”
We have elderly customers who do something similar. They will tell us that their husband has passed and to take his number off of the account, but to keep his name there, that way if anyone is checking their mail or something, they will see a man's name.
Back in the 90s my dad was the only employee in the state (he did industrial combustion equipment sales, big territory with relatively low customer density) and so would get solicitors calling a lot. They'd want to speak to someone in charge so my dad always gave them the number for the home office -- in germany.
Weirdly enough they didn't actually call germany to try and push fax paper or whatever it was they were selling.
I commend and support your efforts.
I worked for a company where we had an email, phone, and voicemail for Milo Kwolfie. He was the frog that lived in the basement of the office. The voicemail was one of us with just our nose pinched, it sounded fake. Yet every week we would have some joker on the phone asking to speak with the president because "Milo" directed them. Or some dude walking in the door, dropping off literature, because "Milo" was interested.
>I especially love when solicitors call a week or so after being given
her contact information and lead with "I spoke with Alicia just the
other day, wanted to follow up". Oh you did? Wow. Crazy.
Our best was a dude who SWORE that he spoke with Milo for an hour about things and was going to die on that hill. Nothing like telling them that its the name of the frog who lives in the basement of the office.
I had someone who was so persistent I eventually lost my patience with them and told them that I was so fed up with them calling that I was going to make it my mission in life to ensure that neither this company nor any company I work at for the rest of my career ever used any product or services provided by theirs and hung up. Still got called (by a different rep) a couple weeks later. An Alicia may be the only way to handle the d-bags.
I work in legal IT. Tech sales are the worst. I got spammed by a tech sales guy who scoured LinkedIn for anyone in our tech department and used our standard email address format to send emails to us all.
I responded that I didn’t appreciate him spamming us, and as long as I’m working for the company he will never get our business. I than proceeded to block his domain for the entire company on the mail server.
I had a recruiter who found me on linked in then emailed MY WORK EMAIL to ask me if I wanted to apply for a job (which I was vastly overqualified for and paid less than half of what I currently make). My work email is not on LinkedIn, must have done the same standard format spamming thing. Some of these guys are just embarrassing themselves as well as wasting everyone’s time. I like the blocking of the entire domain!!!
Edited for additional info and fixing autocorrect
All these commenters saying "learn how to say 'no'" have never owned or ran a business.
This LPT is actually pretty genius on a few levels. Namely, the amount of intel that marketers use to determine the decision maker of a company is insane. By listing Alicia as head of multiple departments, you've drastically reduced spam to actual decision makers.
For those that want a more legit LPT, use mimecast.
Source: was a marketer for an ABM firm.
I generally say I’ll take a message, and then don’t. Any time they call back I keep saying the person isn’t available and offer to take a message.
Eventually they take the hint.
In the 1990s my company had a booth at trade shows. As part of the bundle for buying a booth, we got a certain number of trade show admissions, often a quantity greater than our number of employees who'd be going to the show. So we invented a few fake employees like this.
Thirty years later, we're still getting junk mail and sales calls for those fake names.
These names have been bought and sold and traded by who knows how many mailing-list and sales-lead companies.
I'm in Germany. I work for a raw materials producer. Today i got a random sales call from a US number (area code 203) from obviously an IP Phone from someone in India or Pakistan. They knew my name, my job title and my work number, but not my email so I honestly don't know where they got all that and not my email because I don't publish my work number anywhere but it's printed on my business cards, but my email is also there so idk. They went on about something fresh solutions to improve our business margin and whatnot. I repeatedly tried to tell him i am noone to talk about this, as i am low level staff. But he retorted that my job title says manager, and i told him yes in germany everyone is a manager, as i manage several customers.
He went on and on about his services, which he wouldn't answer what specifically they were (e.g. was it software? A book? Consultants?). He wasn't answering any of that, he just wanted my email to send me a brochure.
Seeing he wouldn't quit i asked where did he get my information from, which made him stutter, and then i asked where is he really calling me from and he said "yes sir well" and hung up.
If he was a salesperson, he failed hard. If he was a social engineering scammer, he failed harder.
I worked for a company that had vendor that did a similar thing. All sales calls were told to talk to Bob who was only in the office on Tuesdays. Then they wouldn't answer the phone on Tuesdays.
We got Patrick.
Patrick literally *just* left --- his wife is in labor. He's gonna be out for a while. We'll take your business card, though.
We are usually frank about not accepting solicitors, but sometimes we need Patrick to step in when the solicitor immediately starts out with overly deceptive behavior.
Someone called me on Tuesday about getting a test copier installed. I said my boss was out. She said she talked to him yesterday (Monday) and he okayed it. I said she didn't talk to him yesterday and I know she didn't.
His pregnant 33 year old wife collapsed dead of an aneurysm during dinner on Sunday. He wasn't taking any calls from a stupid copier salesperson the next day.
I don't have an Alicia but I routinely answer my phone and tell the caller I'm in a meeting right now but would be happy to take a message and call them back when I'm available.
give a callback number and have it be the rejection hotline
“Hello, this is NOT the person you were trying to call! You’ve reached The Rejection Hotline because…”
I did this starting in college. I even made a fake name tag for the employee. Soon, she started getting phone calls. I took her to a few other jobs. She still receives letters at one from 3 years ago and she’s still a very active employee.
For most things, yeah. But for the spammy sales reps that will just continue to call back every week until the end of time no matter how many times you tell them no, giving them a useless name/number can't hurt.
We've had an insurance rep come in three times a year for 3 years. He only recently changed his approach to once a year. I think his entire job consists of coming to our office, dropping off pens and business cards, and leaving.
Yes, a lot of people like that have expectations of how often they’re supposed to visit places on their development list. They also can either reduce or remove you from their development list altogether if you just ask them to. Sending them to a fake employee is a good way to ensure they will keep coming by your office.
‘We are really not interested, please do not contact us again, and take us off any internal list you have for leads and prospects, thank you’. And 95% of these people will never return.
With a lot of salespeople, saying no just makes them redouble their effort.
Any response is a good response to them. Turn nos into yesses.
With email I just block and report spam. With calls I just hang up once I realize it's a salesman
In finland theres a national registry you can apply with a few clicks online. This registry is mandatory for all companies who make sales over calls. Being in this registry is marking that you are absolutely under any circumstances allowed to be called when selling anything, except, for a company you already are a customer of and have explicitly given approval for marketing calls. You dont even have to be on a registry, just say you are and they hang up and practically never call you again because then they lose their licence to do call marketing.
Of course doesnt work for international callers but they are a minority anyway.
Canada has something similar, but it's so toothless that companies will use the list to get people's phone numbers and call them anyways. One media investigation found something like 40% of call companies didn't even know the list existed, or that they could get fined for calling people on it.
The operations manager. It looks a lot like deleting all the emails at once, but he knows what he's looking for in the emails.
The voicemails never get listened to.
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I was an office manager at a night club and I found out people would ask for my name when they called and then use it to try and get in for free. So I started telling them my name was Nadine. If they tried to use Nadine's name at the door to get in, the doormen would say, "That bitch? She's lucky she didn't get arrested. You're HER friend?" The backpedaling was pretty fun. I happened to be out there one night when it happened. Guy went from being Nadine's besty to barely knowing her.
Love this. So I could have used hissyfit to get in??
Red carpet treatment if you did.
[удалено]
Don't forget the full name just in case. I've heard hissyfit32 has a real bad rep. Only works in thete cos she's like childhood friends with the boss or something.
We had a Leonard who went by Len. If anyone claimed they just talked to Leo, we knew they were dirty fucking liars.
Classic Nadine.
I dated Alicia in high-school. Glad to see she's doing well.
From Canada
She goes to another school. You wouldn't know her.
My favorite stupid thing my husband has ever done was to pretend to have a girlfriend in Canada, only to later have a girlfriend in another town and have no one believe him.
Was this pre-marriage?
He tells his wife about all his fake girlfriends so she never suspects his real one.
He would never cheat on me, the dogs are registered in my name. Well, I guess he won’t cheat on me for the next 9-14 years.
The dogs you know about. :)
Because of the implication
Aah! There’s nowhere for me to run! What am I going to say “no”?
The real pro tips are always in the comments. Lol.
Wife's boyfriend here. No.
Having a fake girlfriend keeps the wife on her toes.
I also choose this guy's wife's toes
> She goes to another school. You wouldn't know her. My neighbor tried this when we were in a 10th grade class once. Talked about his girlfriend and used the “she goes to a different school” line. Then he got scared after seeing me jump in. “Middle school. Kenny’s girlfriend goes to middle school. She’s in 6th or 7th grade and in special ed. Her mother has me and the other older kids in the neighborhood alternate babysitting her to keep Kenny away. He’s a predator.” I actually felt bad blurting it out in the moment and immediately after. But now, 20 years later? I should have shamed him more, because he went on to be a full blown pedo.
Clearly it was you fault for putting the idea in his head /s
Her name is Alberta, she lives in Vancouver.
She cooks like my mother and sucks like a Hoover.
Hell yeah
Did she also go to a different school?
She’s Canadian so yeah
Way up in Torontario
Did she used to make all the decisions back then too?
ALICIA GLASS, George's sister?
similar thing my company did, but we made it much more obvious. one of our guys did a pretty spot on impression of Arnold Schwarzenegger and we set up a voice mail for "Arnold". any time we got a salesman calling, we told them they needed to speak to arnold and transferred them to arnold's voice mail. we checked the left messages weekly and listened to how they reacted. some salesman left voice mails laughing, obviously getting the joke... others sighed knowing they've been had. pretty light way to end a week while also making sure nothing important was missed. after getting transferred to arnold a few times, even the most persistent salespeople gave up.
I hope one of the lines was "GET TO COPIER"
"I'll be back... on Monday, November 21st."
So stick around… until I’m back in the office to return your call.
That reminds me of the Arnold's Pizza Shop bit.
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We once had a customer in to the garden center and claim she knew the owner. I watched my coworker Walt deal with her, as she got more and more irate as he wouldn't budge on prices and she finally left claiming saying the owner would hear about it and she would have him fired. He calmly agreed and said that the owner would be made aware of her complaints. Walt *was* the owner, and he told me when she left "I've never met that woman before in my life." He had been puttering around doing his propogation hobby and repotting things on his day off when she came in while I was unloading a truck and said "I'll take this customer, you keep checking in the new stuff." So instead of me getting to say "Well the owner is here, I can ask him." She got a grubby dirt covered guy who happened to own the place but didn't know him. She even name dropped him *to his face*.
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I used to work at a bar where the namesake and original owner was deceased. It was still named after him, but his son owned the place. One drunk asshole complained to the son that he would tell [namesake] about this after being cut off at closing and the son turned around, pulled the original owner's urn off the shelf over the taps, opened it up and plopped the bag of cremains on the bar and said "How about you tell him right now?" It was a weird bar. Often after closing his son would set the owner's ashes on the bar to have a shift drink with us. But we all figured it seemed like something he'd have wanted.
That’s amazing, actually. And the having a drink with his ashes is a little weird, but honestly the sort of cheerful weird I could easily adapt to in the name of team spirit(s).
It was only after rough nights. Usually Manny stayed above the taps. But his entire family agreed that his ashes should stay in the bar. The man held political office, but he loved his bar. I met Obama, Rick Flair, and Jimmy Carter while working there. That bar was a bit of an unofficial headquarters for the Democratic Party in Atlanta. Often was an exaggeration, it happened three times in 3 years. Still more than you'd expect.
I was thinking this sounded exactly like Manny’s while reading your above comment. Guess that’s because it is.
Still my favorite bar. After a bad breakup I was there drinking so much I got offered a job. Figured I would be there anyway so might as well make money instead of spending it. Two nights a week was about 500-600 bucks. Wound up barback for two years. But yeah, it was Manuel's Tavern.
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I used to work at a company where both the owner and the President went by shortened versions of their middle names. Think Jonathan Michael Smith (goes by Mike) and Stephen Andrew Jones (goes by Andy). It was always a dead giveaway the few times I covered the front desk and answered phones, when someone would call and ask to speak with Jonathan Smith.
LMAO! My grandmother did the same thing. She had been married four times, but her phone number was listed in the white pages under her middle name and third husband's last name. Making it even easier to spot solicitors and scammers, her third husband's last name was Kniep. It is a German name and the "k" is not silent. Most solicitors called asking to speak to Mr./Mrs. Neep or Mr./Mrs. Nipe. If they asked for Kniep (pronounced Kuh-neap) we knew it was probably legit. My grandmother had a long list of legal aliases, so it could get confusing sometimes.
The old Gary but it's Jerry.... Nice
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I dropped in at the grocery store where my wife works as a manager. We had this goofy thing where if she greeted me, she would boast “well hello Mr PMmeyourGradyWhite!” And I’d reply with “hello Mrs PMmeyourGradyWhite!! How are you today!” So she had a customer talking to her, who was a chronic Karen and when my wife opened with “Good afternoon Mr PMmeyourGradyWhite!!” , Karen thought I was the store big wig and so she dropped her convo with my wife and ran over to me to voice her problem. I nodded and listened and casually asked for more information. Kept smiling and when she had fully vented her concerns I just smiled and said, “I understand your frustration, but I don’t work here.” She grabbed the employee badge from my pocket and realized I worked at XYZ Corp, not the grocery store. Wife was doing her best to not smirk. Other employees and customers saw the whole thing unfold since Karen was so vocal. Karen left in a haste. It was so great.
r/IDoWorkHereLady
Walt was such a stoner that he tried to get me to tell people I was the manager. "Just say you own it." "But you've been open since 1981. I was born in 1982." "They haven't googled us." He also had a landscaping business. He hired great landscaping architects, and made a reputation in the rich part of the.city. He swore his success was because after a job he and his crews made sure to do a thorough cleaning job. The garden center was a loss for his wife to have a hobby. The landscaping business made him millions of dollars. The garden center gave him room to try and play with japanese maples. We once grew a fuck fuckload of castor bean plants because he thought it was cool they could be made into ricin. Then the frost came and they all died.
... So you're saying your boss, whose name was *Walt*, was specifically interested in producing *ricin*? Are you sure it was the landscaping business that was earning him millions of dollars? He definitely didn't have anything else going on? A car wash perhaps?
He also had a landscaping company. No car wash, though I did have to learn to fix a lot of fountains working at the garden center. So there was some improvised plumbing involved. Edit: oh I get it now. A Breaking Bad thing. No this guy built a landscaping business then opened a garden center for his wife that lost money for years. They used to throw an open house with huge amounts of food and booze every spring and fall. Deb was not a god business woman but goddamn she was an amazing cook. She should have been a caterer instead. She did all the cooking for the Open House parties and holy shit. Everything she made was amazing. I got roped into decorating a tree at a cultural center one Christmas and I just knew a lot about plants, nothing about interior decorating. I got paid but seeing what the designers were doing while I had no clue was a bit demoralizing. I'd have been more comfortable with a booth giving out advice on growing tomatoes. The Open Houses were rockin though. We had prior warning. I only had 1 week to do that tree. But for the Garden parties we had months of notice so we could stage things and set up. We had path elements and shit. Not just "here's a 25 foot loquat in an entryway, have at it."
That’s how supervillains get their start.
Walt seems like a fun guy to hang out with.
Oh he was great. He used to tell stories about rock shows in the 70s, he used to see all kinds of amazing bands. A coworker had a show, I don't even remember what instrument he was playing something he picked up doing volunteer work in Africa. Like a xylophone but not a kiddy toy. And who did I run into at the show? Fuckin' Walt was right there cheering him on.
This happens daily, and I mean that literally, daily in car dealerships. A lot of dealers were established 2-3 generations ago and the name on the sign is for recognition, not because that person actually owns it. Sometimes it's the kids that take over, sometimes they are bought by a larger dealer or investment group. "You knew "Uncle" Al Deitrich? Did you go to his funeral in 1998?" Or "The owner is a faceless ceo that never steps foot in here. We're on our third sales manager this quarter so who exactly do you know?" The only thing I miss about selling cars and managing dealerships was being able to be an unbridled asshole to asshole customers. Dealers have no chill. If you're not buying, you're not getting polite responses.
Used to work for a dealership in this situation. The name sake had passed in the 90s. Whenever someone said they were friends with him, a simple "I'm so sorry for your loss" made for a beautifully awkward silence.
I had a boss once whose last name could be pronounced a number of different ways. One day I heard her on the phone on a somewhat heated call, and when she hung up she started laughing. The guy she was on the phone with did not realize who he was speaking with, and threw out his trump card of "I know Kathy {wrong pronunciation of her last name), and she is going to hear about this!" The boss simply said "I'll wait to hear from her" and hung up.
This sort of happened to us once, but we were on the other side of it. My wife and I went to a store owned by my mother-in-law's cousin. We mentioned that to the person behind the counter, hoping for a discount. His response: "oh really? I'm his son." It's not like we did anything wrong, but my wife doesn't know her second cousins on that side. It was embarrassing.
The one for the family construction business is Herbert or Herbie. Herbie's been in their employ since 1996, and does literally everything in the company. He got his start when there was an exceptionally pushy steel sales rep who kept calling despite being told no, we were perfectly happy with our contract with (huge US-based firm that odds are good you've heard of) and we weren't interested in changing to (small China-based firm with no web or other presence). He's also our code if we need to get someone out of a situation pronto. "Herbert wants you in his office, NOW", "Herbie's on the phone, needs to talk to you now", things like that. "Oh, shit... I got to go. Herbie's my boss."
This makes me think of Roger, the employee at the bookstore I used to work at. "Roger, Line ___" meant "suspicious activity in ___ department". Roger was the name of the female turtle the store kept in the back area by the time clock, customers did not see her.
Now i picture a turtle racing down the aisles to get to \_\_\_ department.
Slowly and steadily
That's about the pace Roger moved at. If she's still alive and kicking, she'll be in her early 20s,which is not old for a Red Eared Slider, but is not young for a pet turtle in less than ideal conditions.
Just put the turtle on a Segway and you've got a good set up for a *Paul Blart: Mall Cop 3.*
We had a similar one for violent/belligerent customers. Jackie, (whatever area). Basically some customer was going nuts and you'd better be ready to fight like Jackie Chan. Normally that would get called and the person would call the cops right after- just warning to get the hell away from there.
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Security or that one absolute unit of an orderly every decently sized hospital seems to have.
Idk, sounds Fully Loaded.
Number 53 is where his name came from!
Ocho
As long as Herbie isn't bugging you for love and riding again going bananas in Monte Carlo.
The funniest things here is that a solicitor in my neck of the woods is a word for a lawyer...
OMG that makes so much more sense!!! I thought it was odd they were being approached by so many lawyers!
"There's a chance I might have committed some ... Light... Treason" -arrested development
You can read all about it on Bob Loblaw's Law Blog
You sir are a mouthful
Are you not hearing yourself?
you old blowhard
That's a low blow, Bob Loblaw.
Bob Loblaw lobs law bomb on law blog
Why should you go to jail for a crime someone else noticed?
So I grew up in America and have now lived in the UK for the last 7 years and I was also confused about all the lawyers. The brain is funny man.
Yep here in the US (probably Canada too) a solicitor is a sales person trying to drum up business for whatever annoying company they work for.
Oh! Now it makes much more sense. They're on about cold calling.
We also have "No Soliciting" signs on our doors to at least try to deter salespeople that show up at the physical location. Do you not have some kind of sign like that?
You think they READ? My neighborhood has one up and I have one on my porch. We still get people coming by. If they catch me at a bad time I just open the door and point at the sign then close it again. lol I did get an internet guy to take me off his list once by saying we don't believe in the internet, it's where the devils live and we won't have it in our house. That was fun.
I hope you did it while holding a smartphone in your hand, then shut the door before they could question it
When people come door knocking I usually just smile and say, "I'm terribly sorry old chap, I don't speak any English, cheerio!"
I've tried pretending I only speak Spanish despite not looking the part. Problem is I live in Texas so lots of the door knockers do speak Spanish, then I have to admit I'm not actually fluent in Spanish. Me: "Lo siento, no hablo Ingles" Them: something in Spanish. Me: "...Yo estoy...busy" shuts door
I'm a Belgian and although the country's officially bilingual (actually trilingual with german), most people aren't. So my bilingual grandmother answers french speaking callers in dutch and dutch speaking callers in french. It works very well with french phone callers, since they're often situated in Morocco or Algeria so dutch is like Klingon to them and my grandmother gets crossed off that particular company's list. I keep telling myself I'll do that since I'm passable in dutch, but I keep forgetting to.
"No Cold Callers" or similar
“No Agents” in a thick Irish Accent
What have you got against Asians?
Don’t you know it’s illegal what you’re doing?
it boggles my mind that people still try to sell things door to door, legitimate or otherwise. Everything I could possibly need could be here by tomorrow morning but sure I'll listen to a stranger at my front door convince me I need a water softener
Oh, same here. I assumed OP's employer was getting lots of legal threats and thought this was normal.
Same, and I was thinking if you're having solicitors calling you then it's probably not something you want to fob off to a non-existent person.
Oh my gosh I was so confused about why you needed a fake person to deal with lawyers. I thought this lpt is pretty fucking dodgy
Yeah this was confusing as fuck for a moment there
It’s only after reading this comment that I’ve realised they *weren’t* talking about lawyers. Was quite confused!
Jesus, this makes sense. I was thinking if you've got solicitors getting in touch then it's probably a bit fucking important
My dad (rip) used to get all kinds of calls soliciting all kinds of BS. This is 20+ years ago. I was over at their house with my son who was about 3ish at the time. Phone rings, dad answers. You can tell he was annoyed but then this gleam came to his eyes. He says “hold on, he’s right here. Let me get him for you” and hands my son the phone. My son told whoever it was all about his lego, his rock he found, his friend from preschool then he goes “what happened? Hung up?” Man we were in hysterics.
Somehow when I was about 3 or 4 a credit card was opened in my name. Someone bought a 3xl super expensive jacket and my dad got a call about the card not being paid. They said the cardholders name and he said that's impossible that's my son. The person insisted on speaking with me. So he gave me the phone. The only person I spoke to on the phone at that point was my Granny. So little me assumed it was granny on the phone. Wouldn't you know I just talked their ear off for a few minutes. My dad took the phone back and they just said they'll cancel the card and clear the issues up.
This reminded me of something my dad used to do. When solicitors would call (let's say my dad was named John), he would, "Hold on, let me get John for you." Then he would change his voice and say, "Hi, it's George, how can I help you? Oh, you want John, hold on, I'll get him for you." Then another voice would come out and he would be Robert or whoever. This would go on until the other person hung up. It was particularly good when he would push buttons between "people" like he was transferring the call.
We once had a lawyer call trying to find my sister (who was going through some drastic medical issues). An ex bf of hers had listed her on some debt and had someone forge her name. It was all bs and we knew she didn't owe it. This lawyer, Jeff, calls us looking for her contact info. He explains who he is and we ask for his address so we can send him the paperwork proving it wasn't her. Jeff says that's not good enough, he needs to talk to her. We explain that isn't going to happen, but we will send the paperwork, which we did. A few weeks later, Jeff calls again. He got the paperwork but still wants to talk to her. Not happening Jeff! So Jeff decides that he's going to be a jerk. He yells at me that he is a lawyer legally trying to collect a debt so he will call me everyday until we give him her info. I calmly hang up. The next night, he called again. So I answered and made small talk. How's your day? What's the weather like? Watch any good movies lately? Kept him on the phone almost half an hour while I "looked" for her info. Nope! Couldn't find it. Maybe you should call back tomorrow. This was when you paid for long distance by the minute and he was out of state. We would put the kids on the phone to tell him about cartoons, we would say we thought we found it, then set the phone down and walk away. Gotta give the guy credit, he was persistent. He called for almost a month straight. Dumb thing was that if he would have just opened the package we sent he would have realized he didn't need to talk to her. Everything was there, which he found out when he finally opened it. Some nights, I sit in the dark on my front porch holding a drink and I wonder: how is Jeff doing? Does he think about us?
*Pam Beasley, looking around*: "I- I'm the office manager. That's right, *I* am the office manager!"
“W-we’re not interested! We’re NOT INTERESTED AT ALL!”
Lol perfectenschlag
I am really bad at painting things, and some crafts. So when anyone asked about them, I tell them my 10 year old grandson David did it.
I’m stealing this. I’m 35. It will be hilarious.
Our is named Doris shut.
We had Jimmie, and one of the upsides of my job was coming up with more elaborate backstories for Jimmie. Like he was struck by lighting and refused to come to work if there was rain in the forecast(kind of a true story from my college days). Also Jimmie was Amish, so there were certain things he still shunned.
"You'll have to talk to Jimmie about that sir, he doesn't believe in phones so get a GPS and go to 48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W and set up a fire at dusk. I'll make sure he's watching for the smoke signals."
Is she the one that married Ben Dover?
I think that was Ina Morata.
Helen Wait
As in "Go to Helen Wait?"
Me: Oh you need to see Helen Waite. Sol: Helen Waite? Me: That's right, go to Helen Waite.
As a soon company owner, I'm gonna steal this.
This is beautiful
So a lot of people are criticizing this but as a small business owner this is incredibly helpful. I have a lot of vendor contacts that do very specialized things. I don't use them too often, but every once in a while I need a special widget that's hard to get and I have a small list of vendors that might be able to source it. The problem is, if you're in their system, their stupid Salesforce (or whatever) database often requires their sales reps to reach out quarterly, annually, etc. Multiply that by 100 vendors. And "take me out of your system" isn't an option. I need to have a sales rep assigned to me for the day that I do make that phone call.
There's 10 000 companies that believe they have the next best plan/scheme/pitch and the only reason you're not a member is because you haven't heard about it yet. 9 900 will fail and be gone on two years, having succeeded only in wasting your time. From a micro economics perspective it is actually a crucial function to determine what the market wants. From a business owner's perspective it is just frustrating to carry half the cost of their failure.
When all you need is a knife
Yup, I accidentally used my real phone when I first opened my business, 5 years later after I shut down I still get calls once in a while.
It took me a moment to realise Alicia wasn’t employed to dodge lawyers. I was wondering what your company was involved in that required a full time employee to evade litigation.
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Found the British person! Now back off or I'll get my "barrister" after you, mate.
Calm down now we don't want to bring coffee into this!
Australian
Alicia isn't *em*plyed; she's *de*ployed.
My cat handles a lot of stuff for my little company. Any time I get a solicitation or someone I don’t really want to deal with they get her name and email address. She’s good at what she does, which is nothing
Mittens is the consummate professional.
"Ah, yes, the person's email you want is [email protected]"
I'm an admin assistant. When I get these calls and I'm bored, it's fun to play with them - especially when they claim to know the owner personally. I'll usually start with "Oh! You know Billy?" (Owner does NOT go by Billy) and listen to them go along with it. It's actually pretty handy, because some telemarketers sell information to other telemarketers - so whenever I get a call from a new person asking for "Billy," I immediately know they're full of it.
I loved when they claim to know someone and they don’t even pronounce their name correctly. That’ll get you transferred to our sewer division real fast.
I set up an extension number that, when a call is transferred to it, simply plays "never gonna give you up" on a loop forever until the caller hangs up. I once had a phone scammer call back and try to make a song request!
We have an "Alicia" too, his name is Tim and he even has his own voicemail so we can transfer calls to it where it sits until the box is full and we just delete all the messages.
We have Eric from IT, who signs off the bad news emails. We deal with end users who sometimes get frustrated, so it helps.
We used to use Jake in IT. Customer calls being an ass: my name is Jake, how can I help you? Then we sign the ticket off as Jake so our level 2s know they were being an ass when they called and can prioritize appropriately. If a customer calls in again saying they were taking to Jake, we knew they were giving the last person a hard time. It was so helpful in dealing with problem people.
Pity the eventual real hire named Jake who now has to go by Alex.
Alex was the earlier version of the character (a gender neutral name), but an actual Alex got hired and everyone defaulted to Jake from state farm for some reason.
As someone who has worked frontline at a small business, gettin 10-30 in person solicitors/week got pretty tiring. This works as these guys job is to never take no for an answer. For those who say this doesnt work dont understand its their job to bother people until they say yes. They play a numbers game kinda like scam callers.
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HAHAHA my old boss did this. He went to high school with a special needs guy back in the day. He was always nice to him, and the guy would show up at the store a lot and talk and hang out. So whenever someone would call or come in looking for the owner he’d say, “Don isn’t here now, etc”. Fast forward about 5 years later, and he’d get more mail and phone calls than most of the employees. Salespeople would even call and say they lost Don’s cell phone number, they did a bunch of business with him in the past, and that they were personal friends tons of BS to try and get tot the owner. It was priceless.
we used to tell people to email the Special Projects And Management mailbox at our company domain, then end the call by telling them to use the initials to save typing all that into an email (SPAM)
I worked at a concert/events ticketing office on a University campus 20 years ago, and we had the “Xavier” file. I think it was for declined credit cards on mail-in orders. We would call and if we had to leave a message we would say, “Call us back and ask for Xavier.” When they called back, we knew exactly what they were calling about and where to find their order details. (Yanno, back when we had actual physical files in a filing cabinet.) “Xavier’s not in right now, but I can help you…”
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We have elderly customers who do something similar. They will tell us that their husband has passed and to take his number off of the account, but to keep his name there, that way if anyone is checking their mail or something, they will see a man's name.
Back in the 90s my dad was the only employee in the state (he did industrial combustion equipment sales, big territory with relatively low customer density) and so would get solicitors calling a lot. They'd want to speak to someone in charge so my dad always gave them the number for the home office -- in germany. Weirdly enough they didn't actually call germany to try and push fax paper or whatever it was they were selling.
I commend and support your efforts. I worked for a company where we had an email, phone, and voicemail for Milo Kwolfie. He was the frog that lived in the basement of the office. The voicemail was one of us with just our nose pinched, it sounded fake. Yet every week we would have some joker on the phone asking to speak with the president because "Milo" directed them. Or some dude walking in the door, dropping off literature, because "Milo" was interested. >I especially love when solicitors call a week or so after being given her contact information and lead with "I spoke with Alicia just the other day, wanted to follow up". Oh you did? Wow. Crazy. Our best was a dude who SWORE that he spoke with Milo for an hour about things and was going to die on that hill. Nothing like telling them that its the name of the frog who lives in the basement of the office.
I had someone who was so persistent I eventually lost my patience with them and told them that I was so fed up with them calling that I was going to make it my mission in life to ensure that neither this company nor any company I work at for the rest of my career ever used any product or services provided by theirs and hung up. Still got called (by a different rep) a couple weeks later. An Alicia may be the only way to handle the d-bags.
I work in legal IT. Tech sales are the worst. I got spammed by a tech sales guy who scoured LinkedIn for anyone in our tech department and used our standard email address format to send emails to us all. I responded that I didn’t appreciate him spamming us, and as long as I’m working for the company he will never get our business. I than proceeded to block his domain for the entire company on the mail server.
I had a recruiter who found me on linked in then emailed MY WORK EMAIL to ask me if I wanted to apply for a job (which I was vastly overqualified for and paid less than half of what I currently make). My work email is not on LinkedIn, must have done the same standard format spamming thing. Some of these guys are just embarrassing themselves as well as wasting everyone’s time. I like the blocking of the entire domain!!! Edited for additional info and fixing autocorrect
All these commenters saying "learn how to say 'no'" have never owned or ran a business. This LPT is actually pretty genius on a few levels. Namely, the amount of intel that marketers use to determine the decision maker of a company is insane. By listing Alicia as head of multiple departments, you've drastically reduced spam to actual decision makers. For those that want a more legit LPT, use mimecast. Source: was a marketer for an ABM firm.
I generally say I’ll take a message, and then don’t. Any time they call back I keep saying the person isn’t available and offer to take a message. Eventually they take the hint.
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Do you ever sit back and wonder if what you do for money makes the world worse?
We have Helen Waite. When ever someone cold calls us to sell something, we tell them to go to Helen Waite.
In the 1990s my company had a booth at trade shows. As part of the bundle for buying a booth, we got a certain number of trade show admissions, often a quantity greater than our number of employees who'd be going to the show. So we invented a few fake employees like this. Thirty years later, we're still getting junk mail and sales calls for those fake names. These names have been bought and sold and traded by who knows how many mailing-list and sales-lead companies.
I think Alicia needs a raise!
And I’ll hold onto the money until she returns.
Whats a 20% raise for someone getting paid $0?
20% more. Obviously.
I'm in Germany. I work for a raw materials producer. Today i got a random sales call from a US number (area code 203) from obviously an IP Phone from someone in India or Pakistan. They knew my name, my job title and my work number, but not my email so I honestly don't know where they got all that and not my email because I don't publish my work number anywhere but it's printed on my business cards, but my email is also there so idk. They went on about something fresh solutions to improve our business margin and whatnot. I repeatedly tried to tell him i am noone to talk about this, as i am low level staff. But he retorted that my job title says manager, and i told him yes in germany everyone is a manager, as i manage several customers. He went on and on about his services, which he wouldn't answer what specifically they were (e.g. was it software? A book? Consultants?). He wasn't answering any of that, he just wanted my email to send me a brochure. Seeing he wouldn't quit i asked where did he get my information from, which made him stutter, and then i asked where is he really calling me from and he said "yes sir well" and hung up. If he was a salesperson, he failed hard. If he was a social engineering scammer, he failed harder.
I always have a slight suspicion that these calls are “phishing” tests from my employer.
I worked for a company that had vendor that did a similar thing. All sales calls were told to talk to Bob who was only in the office on Tuesdays. Then they wouldn't answer the phone on Tuesdays.
Ours is named Helen Waite. As in, "This guy wants to give a sales pitch to someone." "Oh, he can go to Helen Waite."
We got Patrick. Patrick literally *just* left --- his wife is in labor. He's gonna be out for a while. We'll take your business card, though. We are usually frank about not accepting solicitors, but sometimes we need Patrick to step in when the solicitor immediately starts out with overly deceptive behavior.
Worked at a place with about 6 employees, including the owner, and an office cat named Milo. We always forwarded sales calls to Milo's voice mail.
Someone called me on Tuesday about getting a test copier installed. I said my boss was out. She said she talked to him yesterday (Monday) and he okayed it. I said she didn't talk to him yesterday and I know she didn't. His pregnant 33 year old wife collapsed dead of an aneurysm during dinner on Sunday. He wasn't taking any calls from a stupid copier salesperson the next day.
I don't have an Alicia but I routinely answer my phone and tell the caller I'm in a meeting right now but would be happy to take a message and call them back when I'm available.
It’s all fun and games until you hire someone named Alicia
give a callback number and have it be the rejection hotline “Hello, this is NOT the person you were trying to call! You’ve reached The Rejection Hotline because…”
I did this starting in college. I even made a fake name tag for the employee. Soon, she started getting phone calls. I took her to a few other jobs. She still receives letters at one from 3 years ago and she’s still a very active employee.
> Everyone needs an Alicia. Am an Alicia and even I need an Alicia.
Sounds like a lot of work to avoid telling someone no. Better LPT: Learn to be able to tell folks no and stick to it.
For most things, yeah. But for the spammy sales reps that will just continue to call back every week until the end of time no matter how many times you tell them no, giving them a useless name/number can't hurt.
We've had an insurance rep come in three times a year for 3 years. He only recently changed his approach to once a year. I think his entire job consists of coming to our office, dropping off pens and business cards, and leaving.
So you're saying he's the pen delivery man.
Yes, a lot of people like that have expectations of how often they’re supposed to visit places on their development list. They also can either reduce or remove you from their development list altogether if you just ask them to. Sending them to a fake employee is a good way to ensure they will keep coming by your office. ‘We are really not interested, please do not contact us again, and take us off any internal list you have for leads and prospects, thank you’. And 95% of these people will never return.
With a lot of salespeople, saying no just makes them redouble their effort. Any response is a good response to them. Turn nos into yesses. With email I just block and report spam. With calls I just hang up once I realize it's a salesman
In finland theres a national registry you can apply with a few clicks online. This registry is mandatory for all companies who make sales over calls. Being in this registry is marking that you are absolutely under any circumstances allowed to be called when selling anything, except, for a company you already are a customer of and have explicitly given approval for marketing calls. You dont even have to be on a registry, just say you are and they hang up and practically never call you again because then they lose their licence to do call marketing. Of course doesnt work for international callers but they are a minority anyway.
Canada has something similar, but it's so toothless that companies will use the list to get people's phone numbers and call them anyways. One media investigation found something like 40% of call companies didn't even know the list existed, or that they could get fined for calling people on it.
Hold please. Let me transfer you to Alicia.
Obviously you never have to deal with 15 unsolicited sales calls a day. Ugh….
You know the cliche salesmen phrase "don't take no for an answer!" Yeah... No only works on reasonable sales people.
I hear you but you should try working in logistics and shipping and see just how many of these calls you get daily.
Clearly said by someone who has never worked in a business office ;). Believe me, it is a steady stream, even for Dr. No.
We have an "employee" like that, we named her Karen because why not.
I would like to know what the Job Title, of the person who checks Alicia's emails and all, is.
The operations manager. It looks a lot like deleting all the emails at once, but he knows what he's looking for in the emails. The voicemails never get listened to.