When Office Calls Take Precedence over Calls from Wife
Sorry, Business Calls
This month is Get Off The Phone Month. The Donkey provides quick tips for you to get off the phone when you are talking to your wife.
Most of the calls I field from my wife occur at work. I’m not sure if she forgets I have a job or if she just misses me a lot. In any event, I have received up to 10 calls a day from her. This makes it difficult to get work done, so I have another great idea for you. When your wife calls your cell phone, be polite and chat for a bit. Once the conversation gets long (over a minute), call your cell phone from your office phone. Once the call waiting kicks in, let her know that you are getting a call from work and need to go. She will understand and you can get back to work.
One Response to “When Office Calls Take Precedence over Calls from Wife”
This probably works great unless she’s the one paying the bills from the home computer (because he’s so “busy” at the office) and she notices how neatly that timing lines up.
I’d be a LOT more upset about being lied to *routinely* than I would about being reminded that he’s busy at work.
One reason calls-at-work happen a lot in our family is that there are times when he’s never *home*, so things that *need* to be discussed can go weeks without a mention unless there is business-hour-contact.
If he’s online, we both prefer to use IM and email so that we don’t make “right now” demands on each other’s time. But quite often, he is either not where he can take his laptop, or he’s not where he can get online, so we’re back to the cellphone (if he can get reception).
Also, on the flip side, let’s talk about how many days I’ve spent trying to get some housework done (it’a a rarity, but every now and then the bug bites me ;->) or get the kids together to get OUT of the house to go do something, or trying to get yard-work done, or trying to figure out what the *heck* he did with the accounts last month, or trying to *cook* something, and he calls *me* 15 times. Literally. Because he’s waiting for something or someone at work, and has time to kill, and he’s bored. .
And those are inevitably the days when he walks in wanting to know where dinner is - because *he* was bored all day, so he kinda assumes *I* had an easy day, too. And I might have.. but for the 15 calls!
We have a great system (great when we remember to use it, anyway) - it works both ways, but somehow he has a hard time believing that I ever “can’t talk right now” since I’m a SAHM.
call-EE: “Hello?”
call-ER: “Hi! got a minute?” (being considerate and respectful of other party’s potential time and attention demands)
Here, the person receiving the call has several options. Here are three examples of good responses.
call-EE response A: “No, but I’ll call back as soon as I can talk.” (acknowledging that the other party *does* need to talk, or they wouldn’t have called! Also taking responsibility for re-establishing that contact)
call-EE response B: Sure, what’s up? (open-ended, no end-time specified, this is an invitation to just shoot the breeze.)
call-EE response C: Yes, but I’ll have to go in 5 minutes (or when the boss gets back, or when this print job finishes, or…)
This one gives the caller the necessary info to determine whether it’s worth the bother of trying to conduct the desired conversation under those constraints and ensures that the caller will NOT feel like the callee is deceiving them when the callee says in the middle of what’s turning into an uncomfortable conversation “Whooops! Print job’s finished! Gotta go!”
This sort of setup takes a little thinking, but it really keeps everyone’s feathers unruffled much better than the call waiting trick.
By silli on Mar 21, 2008