Annoying Phone Manners

I just got back from lunch to find a 4-minute voicemail from a client’s secretary about moving a meeting set for tomorrow. After fast-forwarding through 3:45 of the message to the part where she finally gave me her phone number I deleted the voicemail.

I called the woman to discuss the meeting change and don’t you know she repeated EVERYthing she had just said on the voicemail. So for another 3:45 I sat there amazed that she would repeat herself. After discussions (re: her talking the whole time) we agreed to leave the meeting as is.

My boss came back to his office and said he’d actually prefer to move the meeting and for me to call her and tell her that he’ll call her this afternoon to discuss possible times directly. Doing what had to be done, I called her and said, “He’ll have to modify his schedule and do the meeting earlier, and he asked that I let you know –” suddenly I was cut off as she went into a long speech about “that’s okay because we have people at the facility all day long and yadda yadda yadda,” telling me a bunch of crap I don’t care about.

When it seemed like she’d never stop I finally said, “Ma’am?” She kept going. Okay, I’ll try again.

“MA’AM?” *she stops* “All I wanted to tell you was that my boss will be calling you in the next couple of hours to discuss it directly with you.”

There was a brief moment of silence and then she said, “Oh. Okay.” and hung up.

Do I offend?