Really, Highly Inconvenient Manner In Which The Phones Around This Place Work?
For whatever reason, the most popular key to enable one to “dial out” at any office where I’ve ever worked, has always been, simply, the digit “9.” Since this place is no exception, and long-distance calls are more common than not here, of course the most common first-two-digits combination to dial is “91.”
Does it not seem so reasonable–too reasonable NOT to enact with immediacy, even, given that we’ve been getting company-wide E-Mails from day one warning us about the importance of avoiding this very gaffe–to change this dial-out key or sequence? As I suspected would happen eventually (due to the high frequency that accidental 911 calls are internally reported or otherwise mentioned as coming from our office), I finally fell prey to the ol’ unintentional 911 dial. Over were my days of ridiculing whatever half-conscious boob couldn’t keep it together long enough to avoid dialing the same number twice in a row on accident (am I right?…but that isn’t the question I’m here to ask).
Upon receipt of the follow-up call from the internal party that allegedly had to deal with the callback of the local police department, I managed to elicit that, including my own, no fewer than six accidental 911 calls had originated from our company switchboard thus far that day alone.
On a day that was just more than half over.
I’m still waiting to hear any worthwhile justification for why we haven’t changed the dial-out sequence to, say, the “#” key, or the “7″ key, or a combination of a few different numbers, heck, maybe even have a special key just for the dial-out–after all, at least half of the buttons on this monstrous phone have meanings or functions completely unknown, and therefore unused, to me–anything but the first two-thirds of that most perilously-dialed number in existence. You can scarcely even consider it accidental anymore at this point. Negligent would be a better descriptor.
However, I won’t wait similarly, or at least with any earnest anticipation, for an answer to Really?
Posted by Really? Of The Day 
