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Did Your Teenager Cost You A Great Job?
_Having a home phone is a great thing, Right? Well, unless you have teenagers in the home. Do you spend all your time answering calls from their friends, or wondering if they are hanging on the phone in the other room, while you are sitting and waiting on an important call?
Or what about the message about the job interview that they forgot to give you? This is not exactly like having a professional answering service.
Having teenagers at home can come in handy to answer the phone while your busy doing something else around the house. You know the routine- they drop the phone down on the table and bust the caller’s eardrum, and then they yell across the house, “Mom, it’s for you”. You say, “Who is it?”, and they yell back, “Some guy”. Aren’t you glad they are pre-screening your calls in a professional manner?
An answering machine with a generic message would have been better.
So you go to the phone and find out it’s the Vice President of a company where you applied for a job, and you had left him a message to follow-up on your application from a couple weeks ago.
He informs you that they gave the job to somebody else already, that interviewing was over last week, and you had missed the appointment and they didn’t hear from you, so they assumed you found something else.
You say, “I wasn’t aware I had an appointment”. Then those dreaded words you have heard before, “Well, I called last week and left a message with somebody, who took down the information and promised they would give it to you when you got home.”
Of course the teenager meant, when you got home from beating the streets looking for a job. The teenage answering service is not something you would want to depend on.
The fact is, if you are going to have a home phone, you are gambling every time you give the number out, unless you are going to be there to answer the phone. If the teenager isn’t talking on the phone constantly, irritating callers with a constant busy signal, then they are not taking messages or passing them on when they should.
Many parents have decided that not having a home phone is the best solution and are opting for a cell phone or professional answering service instead.
Even if you have an answering machine on your home phone, if the teenager is home, they are probably going to want to answer the phone, in case it’s a friend calling. Teenagers like to be in charge of the phone as part of their social life, which makes it difficult for a parent to get important messages.
Teenagers can be given prepaid cell phones to have as their own. You can teach them responsibility by making them earn money with after school jobs or allowance, to pay to reload the phone. It also teaches them to value the minutes that they hang on the phone.
As for adults, with the technology available today, you can choose to get a cell phone for yourself or consider hiring a professional answering service for special periods, such as when applying for a new job.
Or what about the message about the job interview that they forgot to give you? This is not exactly like having a professional answering service.
Having teenagers at home can come in handy to answer the phone while your busy doing something else around the house. You know the routine- they drop the phone down on the table and bust the caller’s eardrum, and then they yell across the house, “Mom, it’s for you”. You say, “Who is it?”, and they yell back, “Some guy”. Aren’t you glad they are pre-screening your calls in a professional manner?
An answering machine with a generic message would have been better.
So you go to the phone and find out it’s the Vice President of a company where you applied for a job, and you had left him a message to follow-up on your application from a couple weeks ago.
He informs you that they gave the job to somebody else already, that interviewing was over last week, and you had missed the appointment and they didn’t hear from you, so they assumed you found something else.
You say, “I wasn’t aware I had an appointment”. Then those dreaded words you have heard before, “Well, I called last week and left a message with somebody, who took down the information and promised they would give it to you when you got home.”
Of course the teenager meant, when you got home from beating the streets looking for a job. The teenage answering service is not something you would want to depend on.
The fact is, if you are going to have a home phone, you are gambling every time you give the number out, unless you are going to be there to answer the phone. If the teenager isn’t talking on the phone constantly, irritating callers with a constant busy signal, then they are not taking messages or passing them on when they should.
Many parents have decided that not having a home phone is the best solution and are opting for a cell phone or professional answering service instead.
Even if you have an answering machine on your home phone, if the teenager is home, they are probably going to want to answer the phone, in case it’s a friend calling. Teenagers like to be in charge of the phone as part of their social life, which makes it difficult for a parent to get important messages.
Teenagers can be given prepaid cell phones to have as their own. You can teach them responsibility by making them earn money with after school jobs or allowance, to pay to reload the phone. It also teaches them to value the minutes that they hang on the phone.
As for adults, with the technology available today, you can choose to get a cell phone for yourself or consider hiring a professional answering service for special periods, such as when applying for a new job.