No, I don't know who called.

One of the major functions of my job is that of reception, mainly, answering the phone. Between the two offices that I do this for, there are 26 people (including myself) that the call could be for. On top of the actual calls I get for the offices, I get numerous wrong calls throughout the day of people who called the wrong number. When I am unable to answer the phone for some reason my supervisor as well as the interns act as my back up.

Nearly every call that comes in gets transferred somewhere. When a call is transferred, the caller ID on the phone I'm transferring to will show the number the call came in on which is normally the main office number (I have a separate number for people to call to get me directly).

Now on to the reason for this post. In the law office there are 2 lawyers who, upon coming back to their desk after being away, will look, see they have a missed call, look at the caller ID, see it came from the main line and immediately call me to ask me who called for them if no voice mail was left. Sometimes I can remember who called, but most of the time I can't. Normally they are asking me about a call that came in over an hour before while I've had numerous calls, emails and people walking up to my desk since then. And sometimes, as with what just happened, I wasn't even the one who answered the call. Yet somehow I'm still supposed to know who called. On rare occasion I can go back through my received calls and placed calls lists and match up time stamps, but this does no good if they block their name on caller ID.

It just frustrates me because these two people tend to get annoyed with me if I can't remember who called for them. I'd just like to gripe and say "Look, they didn't leave a voice mail so it must not have been that important or they'll call back. So quit bothering me." But of course I can't say anything like that.

And thus is the life of the receptionist.