It’s a Crazy Life – Real Funny Stories by Receptionists

I work on the reception area of a large Corporate Law Firm.

One day a man came in off the street, he was obviously very angry.

“I want to see someone sharpish” he said.

“Right Sir,” I said “How can we help you?”

“You can run off and get me a lawyer naaaa.”

I must have still looked confused, because he sighed as if I was stupid and said, “It’s her init, she’s doing my nut in!”

”I nodded and quickly came around to his side of the reception desk, because I realised I’d need to lead him away from the area quickly – a couple of important clients from the US were waiting on a couch watching with interest.Then suddenly a very large woman burst through the doors behind him, huffing and puffing.

“Robbie!!!! She screamed “I love ya you know I do!”

“I aint’ saying nothing to ya, you talk to my lawyer.”

She looked at me and suddenly I felt afraid.“Listen luv” She spat at me “you get your dirty little claws out a him, he’s not your next meal ticket.”

“I’m not a lawyer, I’m a receptionist and we don’t handle divorce cases, we’re not that type of law firm, I’m so sorry.”

“Listen to ‘er  ’we don’t handle divorces’ – we DON’T NEED A DIVORCE YOU CHEEKY CAAAAA!!!!!”

At that point my colleague arrived and managed to coax them to the door. I turned around after they’d gone – to see one of our clients laughing so hard she was in tears, she said it was the best thing she’d ever seen over here and had been coming to London for twenty years. I bet she couldn’t wait to get back to the states to tell her friends.

For the sake of putting a naughty Christmas smile on your faces; we asked a group of receptionists to come up with the answers they’d love to give but couldn’t  (something to do with wanting to keep their jobs..) for those questions that get under your skin….

I had a missed call from this number, can you tell me who it was?

1) Captain Birdseye, you’ve won a life time supply of fish fingers and a trip aboard his yacht, The Saucy Sue.
2) It was your mother, you’re a naughty boy you forgot your sandwiches.
3) It was your brain, telling you to get in touch some time.

What are you doing?

1) I’ve been waiting for you to hang around my desk to tell me your life story, like always.
2) Nothing, I sit here day in day out because I’ve nothing better to do, I’m kind of like a door stop with an attitude.
3) Playing a game which involves sitting very still for large periods of the year, and grinning quite a bit, and you’re ruining it.
4) Praying that I’m invisible and that you don’t talk to me again, damn.
5) Loading a rifle under the desk, so I’d start running.

Are you busy?

1) Yes sorry, I wont have a chance to fold your envelopes, damn.
2) No, these 15 meeting rooms and 300 calls I get a day manage themselves.

Are you on your break?

1) I didn’t think we were, but still the git went off with the copy-house woman. Have you got time for me to start from the beginning?
2) I’m on a break from being asked stupid questions, but give me twenty minutes and I’ll be back.
3) Yes, but I finish around 5, if you want to come back?

How long will they be on the phone?

1) Let me listen-in on their conversation, err she’s just saying there’s a pillock salesman on the other line so she’s got to go, so I’m guessing shortly.
2) What a stupid question, how would I know?
3) Go away before I call the police.

I don’t know who I was talking to yesterday, but I need to speak to them again.

1) I’ll just put you through.
2) Do you know who you are?
3) Sorry, they aren’t in.

I was covering reception, it was my first day temping on the smart reception of an advertising agency near Covent Garden.  The Owner of the company had already made it quite obvious she didn’t think I was up to the job. I had a two hour hand-over, then the rest of the office staff headed out for their pre-Christmas lunch – and I was left on my own to look after her precious company.

The woman hadn’t looked like trouble, she was pregnant yes, but I thought she’d just come in to get directions with her Dad. After trying to understand her rasping manic voice for a few minutes it occurred to me that she actually had no intention of making it to a Hospital but wanted to do it right there and then.

So with chairs moved out of the way and a space on the carpet now clear, she collapsed on the floor. They had already dialled the ambulance, so I just prayed it’d get to us in time.

It didn’t.

…So I’ve got the ambulance crew now shouting orders, I’ve got a woman screaming and to top it all, people have begun to wander in off the street to watch it all, and I’m trying to move them back when her Dad thinks he’s’ having chest pains. Typical.

So I we ordered another ambulance.

With the reception full of people, most of them shouting, and a woman screaming over the top of them all, I wondered whether it would be worth calling my Bosses emergency number. I didn’t need to though, because she arrived back around that time.

We had people everywhere, the old guy was being strapped to the stretcher and his daughter giving birth on the other side, as my boss stood in the middle of it all – mouth agape, I grinned at her proudly (thought I’d done rather well in the circumstances)

She didn’t and I got sacked.
Strange that.

Temping’s fun, I like temping, you should try it.

Back when I was a junior receptionist in my first real job I was working for a major web design company that had a lot of cool high profile clients.  Well… one day a very important client walked in for a meeting and noticed a lovely plant we just had delivered for the reception area. As the client was such an important one I wanted to do my bit for the company, so armed with a new found urge to impress I enlightened him with the name of the plant ”This is what’s knows as an ANTHURIUM…” See image above *giggles*

When the client leaned forward to catch a scent of the plant he exclaimed it didn’t have one….

WELL…. THAT just wouldn’t DO and seeing as a few weeks prior I had been watching a nature program about plants and the such – I remembered a segment about THIS particular plant…. so I decided to re-enact the process of extracting the plants “natural scent”… I didn’t explain what I was doing because I thought the surprise would be brilliant.   So with forefinger and thumb I began RAPIDLY “encouraging” it’s scent. After a couple of minutes tugging happily away, I looked up to see the client in complete shock and horror and remembered I had yet to explain what I was doing.  Before I could catch myself I’d stuck out my fingers and asked him if he fancied sniffing them…. somebody stop me!!!!I thought I was going to die on the spot when the full extent of what I’d just done hit me, the bright red glow from the clients face was enough to warrant an emergency evacuation. Needless to say I finished attacking said plant erotically and went back to my desk, head down.

MC

I supervise a team of receptionists who usually have a lot to say for themselves, but recently things changed. I was passing by this particular reception which is on the ground floor and noticed two of my team standing motionless looking dumbstruck, mouths agape. They had on the reception desk a sports bag which was open and as I came around I noticed it was brimming full of money. In front of them was a man in a suit with shades on. Unfortunately I can be in a real grumpy mood on a Monday morning at the best of times, but this morning I was in a corker (I’d already had two of my team call in sick). So I’ll be honest, my immediate thought was ‘oh that’s just typical, they’ve won the ***** lottery now, that’s just great… I suppose I’ll have to start interviewing for more staff wont I!!’

My second thought was that was a solicitor who’d come to bring me a suitcase of money and the news that one of my relatives had died – so I cheered up instantly.

Unfortunately this wasn’t the case, it wasn’t inheritance money. You see I supervise a team of receptionists on the ground floor of an Investment Bank. We often have people come in who mistakenly believe we are the retail wing of the bank (where they can withdraw or deposit money) and the man in question had come to make a rather obnoxiously large deposit of cash. I sadly directed him across the street to the high street version of our bank and waved goodbye to it all.
Shame.

I read about your previous anecdotes and thought I’d let you know about something which happened at a Hotel I was a receptionist for in New York. I once received some flowers on Valentine’s Day from one of the doormen working there. He was a nice guy, but really unconfident, very shy and extremely nervous in front of women – in the two years I’d been there he’d never even had the courage to say hello to me. I don’t usually go for the shy types, but I’d just come out of a relationship with a ‘bad guy’ so thought the change would be refreshing. I went to thank him for the flowers and couldn’t find him anywhere, I spent the afternoon trying to catch up with him, but every time I got close he seemed to disappear. At the end of the day I asked the others on the door and they told me he’d been hiding every time he’d seen me coming, at one point apparently he’d even leapt into a cupboard!

I gave up after that.

I was once working on a reception desk where my boss thought he was so funny, he was constantly cornering you to retell a really old joke and everyone would have to laugh otherwise he got moody. It was a PR agency, and most of the other staff were women, and I guess he liked the fact he had a male receptionist because he could banter with me a bit more. But it got too much when he used to wait for me behind doors and attack me. He was in his 60’s but thought it was what every red-blooded male wanted at work. It was so embarrassing I never knew what to do, I just had to wait until he let me go. I just wanted to be left alone!

Anecdote contributed by Joshua

The receptionist I usually work with was going on maternity leave. She was generally quite lazy, really not flexible, and not really into the whole receptionist buzz, so I was looking forward to seeing who they’d get to replace her for a few months. The receptionist contracted from the agency turned out to be the complete opposite, and the change was really refreshing – for about the first hour! But when he began trying to change all my reception procedures, ‘improve and update, improve and update’ he’d say with zeal, while the words ‘frying pan and fire’ sprang to mind. He’d begun his new system of confirming which meeting room clients would be going to before the actual day. Which meant when we needed to slyly shuffle people around to keep some of the big wigs happy and slotted into their fav meeting rooms, we had to send another email around to everyone with their latest room change. He’d been in reception for longer than me, and seemed to assume he’d been brought in as a ‘head receptionist’ when we were meant to be on the same level. I guess the worst part of those hellish 4 months was when he started volunteering us for Saturday conferences – without asking me if I was even free.

He said it was our chance to prove to the rest of the company how we could do them proud and show our corporate image even at the weekends.

I remember him even punching the air with delight when we were chosen for the conference. I just wanted to strangle him. I never complained again when my colleague returned, I don’t think I let her lift a finger, I just wanted her to stay forever!!

Anecdote contributed by Beth

I work on reception in a 5 star London hotel. One evening I took an internal call from one of our single guest rooms. The lady was English and well-spoken, but appeared to be having a panic attack. She said she couldn’t get out of her room and needed immediate assistance. I tried to calm her down and find out what the problem was – jammed door? Had she locked it? She became more stressed and screamed at me that there was no door. Totally confused, and starting to think she was insane, I asked her to remain calm and tell me if she could see any door at all in her room. ‘Yes, 2 doors – one is for the bathroom and one has a ‘do not disturb’ sign hanging on it.’

I was temping once where there was a receptionist I had to work with who was paranoid about people moving her things, and she was sure the place was infested with mice, the fact that no one saw them didn’t seem to put her off. Then when one day she had a bite taken out of one of her sandwiches, that seemed to do it.

The next day I had to work around all these traps she’d set up everywhere, and I kept jumping at everything that moved, she was absolutely determined to catch ‘these evil vermin’ as she called them. But it turned out, one of the lads from the post room had bitten her sandwich for a laugh…

Anecdote contributed by Octavia