I feel sorry for some of the people who try to call here. They don’t always get who they are looking for. In many cases, I have no idea who they are looking for.
For some reason, we get a lot of wrong numbers. I’m not sure how. It could be something buried deep in the system of the phone company. But it’s been happening for some time. And it’s a bit tough to deal with.
We get a lot of calls for Bell and Telus. Most of which seem to be from customers who’s first language tends to be French. Many of these people are not good with English. Most here tend to be like me. Our French is limited. High school French class is a long way in our past. And a lot of that didn’t seem to stick very well.
Not that I don’t try. I do. But my French is… well… horrible. I may not starve should I happen to find myself on the streets of Paris, but it would be a close thing. But carrying on an actual conversation is not likely to happen.
I’m sure the people calling here expecting to find someone who can converse in their language find just as frustrating as I do. But my weak attempt at “mauvais numero” doesn’t seem to be cutting it.
It’s not just here. I generally try to help those who end up with the wrong number. Try to figure out who or what number they were trying to call in the first place, and see if we can figure out where they went wrong. That sort of thing.
The language barrier is a bit too much in this case. And some get terribly upset, possibly because they are calling due to a problem with their phone or their phone bill, and weren’t really in the mood for a pleasant conversation in the first place. Coming up with someone like me, stumbling their way through trying to talk to them, is likely not making their day better.
We all make mistakes, and those little touch screens we all have in front of us don’t make things easier. So I try to be helpful.
Maybe I should brush up my French a bit more. Just in case those wrong numbers keep coming.
