To add some perspective, I work as a network administrator. Dispite the receptionist's valiant (no pun intended) efforts to filter calls, I still recieve a minimum of 8 calls per week from companies thinking I have time to listen to their schpeals. Since I am on fixed income (salary) any time I spend listening to them cuts into Miller time, so I have become rather creative in ending those conversations. On more than one occasion I have feigned mental insanity (perhaps not altogether untruthful). Other times I say I proport to be the lowest level of outsourced pion. That seems to work best. I've been known to put them on eternal hold. It's so bad, I can't answer my own work phone using my own name. Once they get your name, it's real tough for reception to filter the call. There have been some real doosies, I just can't remember them at the moment. It's always ad-lib. I never prepare any material. I get an equal number of calls personally on my cell (of a business nature). When I'm not representing the company, it gets even better. I have been illiterate, bankrupt. I once told an industry magazine that I did not need their publication any longer because my parakeet had died, and I had no use for cage lining. Those ones always get the office in an uproar.
