I know everbody, actually

[trinityvixen]

When you meet a stranger who works for an institution as large as, say, a hospital, would you really expect them to know everyone working there by name? I suppose the answer is, according to anecdotal evidence of just the two days this week I've been in the office, yes.

On my way out the door for lunch, a woman stopped me and asked me where she could find a particular, named doctor on the twelfth floor. At the time, I had my nose in a book and not a single piece of ID anywhere on display, so I'm not sure why she assumed that I had any first-hand knowledge of the premises. I gave it my best shot, asking her to at least specify the building so that maybe I could direct her to it and she could get a security guard to help her or just go to the twelfth floor and find her way from there. Because there's no way in hell I know the name of a single doctor at this place who isn't my personal doctor or someone in our department. Since she didn't name my OB-GYN or my boss, I couldn't help her. I asked her which building her doctor was in.

She didn't know what building. ::smacks forehead:: She went on to give me some exasperation-induced 'tude when I tried to outline directions to the nearest security guard who could help her, saying that she already talked to one and he had directed her towards where she ran into me.

Just now, I've hung up on a someone requesting that someone I've never heard of be put on the phone. I take a look at my sheet of people in our department and see the name being requested is nowhere on the list (we moved lab phone numbers around, so sometimes we still get calls for the old lab and I'll forward those on). I explained that this person did not work in our department.

"Well, can you forward me to the department he works in?"

Yes, yes I can. Of course I can. I can, throwing a dart at random, discover who the hell you're talking about's phone number in their department. Yep. I'm a magical worker elf. ::rolls eyes:: All I know is they don't work here, and I don't know them. Too bad, so sad. I only hung up on him when it became apparent that this wasn't a matter of life-or-death-or-work and he was just trying to sell something. Argh.

Comments

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

We have a full corporate directory, but I'll still occasionally get a call from someone who's obviously been transferred to the completely wrong place, who doesn't have any idea who they're supposed to be talking to. They get two minutes of trying to explain what they want and my trying to send them to the right person, then it's back to the switchboard operator.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

At least you try to help, thus making you a good person. Theoretically, I could search the database at work and find this person, but I am not doing it for some marketer (who, without missing a beat, asked if anyone wanted his stuff in our lab; my answer: ::click::)