A Monday Morning Phone Call

***Ring Ring***

Me: Good morning Agri-Tech.

Him: Hi, how are you? (slight accent.. I know this sounds bad, but always a tip off of a tele-marketer)

I'm good, tha..

(he interrupts) I need the name of your maintenance man, I can't seem to remember it.

(First of all, we don't have one set "maintenance man", we deal with issues as they arise and whoever is available will work on the problem) I'm sorry, no one is available right now can I help you with something?

No, I want the name of that man

(I'm annoyed by his gender-specific probing) I'm sorry, there is no MAN available for you to talk to. I can help you.

No, just give the man's name.

Sir, if there is something you need, you are going to have to talk to me about it.

I just want his name!

(I'm ticked off) I need to know where you are calling from please.

Oh, I'm calling from IPE

Ok, and what is IPE? What kind of services do you offer? (I'm still trying to be polite for some reason)

I'm not offering YOU anything! (at this point his tone is snide and very rude) Just give me his name already!

(I've had enough at this point) Well, I'm sorry, but I'm not about to give you any names. You're only option is to talk to me.

What kind of secretary are you??!! You are obviously bad at your job, who do you think you are? Give me the name of your maintenance man already!!! (He is yelling)

(First of all, I am not a secretary. Secondly, I'm pissed) What I want to know is who do YOU think you are to call me at MY place of employment and question how I do my job?? There is no one else for you to talk to, I'm not about to give you any names or waste my superior's time with you. Thank you very much, because YOU are NEVER going to call here again ok? (I hang up while I can still hear him yelling away)

I just really wonder why he ever thought it was a good idea to try to bully me into giving him any kind of information. It just made me mad, got my heart pounding and made me completely un-willing to help him. I wonder if it works for him with other people...
Anyway, at the time I was soo angry.. now the whole thing is funny. The thing is, it's not the first time I've had a tele-marketer yell at me.

When I was 17 or so, someone called wanting to sell a credit card or something to my parents. They weren't home so he wanted to leave a message. I knew my parent's weren't interested, but I didn't know how to get rid of him, so I let him rattle off his message and his phone number and an extension number and a reference number all while I was watching tv. Anyway, I guess he picked up on the fact that I wasn't paying much attention because when he was through with his endless supply of numbers he asked me to repeat them back to him. I burst out laughing and admitted that I didn't actually write them down. I did apologize at this point for that. Suddenly he broke down and raged at me about how he was never going to get through to my parent's because I was so unreliable and so on and how he should just call my neighbors and have them give my parent's the message because I obviously was unable to do it and so on and so forth. I told him I didn't appreciate him calling me at home to yell at me and hung up the phone. He called back right away, but I couldn't bring myself to answer it. I was a little less argumentative back then, I think. Today I couldn't help but wish that guy would call back so I could let him have it...

So yeah.. is it me? Am I pushing these end-of-their-rope type people over the edge? Or are they just mean to everyone? Anyone else have any good phone stories??