When your job requires you to be on the phone for hours every day, you end of leaving lots of voicemail messages. After doing it enough times, leaving messages develops a second-nature, sing-songy type of rhythm. You have standard phrases that you often use, just like you have different phrases when you’re closing up a live call. Leaving a message, you tell them to call you with questions and concerns, that you look forward to hearing from them, etc. Closing up a call, you ask if they have further questions, you mention it’s been a pleasure speaking with them, etc. Sometimes a mild distraction will make your lines cross, though, and you have to be deft enough to recover. For example, in leaving a message, you accidentally start to say, “Thank you for…” but maybe you normally don’t thank them for anything when you’re leaving a message so you modify it mid-sentence. “Thank you for… considering your options further with us. Give me a call any time before 6:30.” Swish. But there are those times where you really start a sentence that can only end one way. See if you can find where I decided to forgo modifying it in mid sentence and I just plowed ahead:
[at the end of leaving a phone msg. for work] “…Please give me a call at 800.xxx.xxxx at your earliest convenience, Mr. Schmidt. It’s been a pleasure… leaving you this message. Have a good day.”
Lord. I just did that on Wednesday. I think my favorite part is where I stopped mid-sentence, laughed quietly, and acknowledged the absurdity of the statement just by continuing on. I hope my customer got a chuckle out of it, because I sure did.
What kind of silly things have you said when it became too late to do anything about it, or what kind of verbal faux pas have you made without knowing it?
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