Wednesday, September 28th

Today was a stressful day because we learned how to use the phones. By "use the phones" I mean answering and directing Monte's calls, which the workers here take very seriously. And that's understandable because there are some very important people that call here. You always answer the phone with "Monte Lipman's office". The person will normally state their name and ask if Monte is around, but you always double ask their name so you can write it down, and then you write down the phone number that shows up on the phone down next to their name. If Monte is in his office (which he always is) you tell the caller that he is on a phone call or in a meeting, because you don't know what Monte is doing in his office or how important it is and you never want to interrupt. If it's a really important person calling, like an artist, you are supposed to put them on hold, write their name and what line they're on down on a post it and then take it in to Monte's office. He will either tell you to keep them on hold and he'll pick up, or he tells you to tell them that he'll call them back. After we learned the basics, Blaine and I had to go through test phone calls where Renata pretended to be someone calling the office and then she graded us on how we did. The first time I went I got a B+, but by the end I had an A+.