Dwindling Staff

In the past five workdays, two people have quit. We now have a bare-bones staff and no one to answer the phones.

Answering the phones here is so painful that I try to never do it. MSB requires that we ask each caller their name, company, phone number, email address and message. Every single call. "But what if we know you have already talked to this person before?" we asked. "How would you know that I have talked to him before you get that information?" she replied. So we are supposed to ask for all of this information.

Unless we're not supposed to. She heard the receptionist / intern asking these questions of a caller and yelled from her office, "DO NOT INTERROGATE CALLERS! I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THAT!"

When we take a message on the phone, we have to send her (and only her) an email with a specifically formatted subject line containing first and last name, company, phone number and email address. Then in the body of the message all of this information must be repeated plus the time of the call and the message. Each message like this takes about three minutes from start of call to end of email message.

Then the other day she said that we are to remove our standard email signature block from these messages also. She says it is distracting to see a signature block at the end of the message. Guess who required that we all use the same signature block for all emails awhile back?

Next person to go will either be me or the other remaining male staff member. Not sure who I am betting on at this point. . .