Is “Who Dat?” The Right Question?

One of my bosses is out of the office the rest of this week and so I’ve been doing a lot of busy work to keep myself…uh… busy.

One thing I’ve been doing is calling our clients about some older projects (pre-2017) to find out if we can close our files.  For the most part it has gone well – I’ve managed to close out 15 projects that are confirmed closed, AND cleared out some space in my boss’s office as a result.

Some of the phone calls to clients go really well.

“Hi, I’m Jaynee calling from Company, and I just wanted to see if Project X has concluded and whether or not we can close our file with your permission.”

“Why yes, I see in our records that this project finished in June 2017, so you are welcome to close your project files.”

“Thank you. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

Pretty standard fare.  Until today.  Called a client – a professional company with dozens of employees and a receptionist that answers the phone.  And this is what happened:

“Hi, I’m Jaynee calling from Company, and I am calling to check as to whether the project involving John Doe has finished.”

“Who dat?”

And my response was:

I thought maybe for a second I had called a wrong number. But nope! That was their receptionist, who continued on with her highly developed sense of professionalism, but huffing into the phone when I asked to speak to someone about the project, then after muting herself for a moment came back and said, “We gonna hafta call you back.”

You do that, honey.