Someone from the higher ups had received complaints that I don’t answer my phone enough.

My boss told them I wasn’t hired here to provide phone support.

I used to work tech support at a large company.

A few of the worst customers would bitch that they couldn't talk to the engineers at will, after all they spend big $$$ and so forth.

For the folks who I thought would listen my line was always:

"I get it, I would want that too. Here is how you get that.... be able to answer / predict all my questions / take all the steps that I'm going to ask you to do.... and do all that and document it ACCURATELY... and if you do that enough I bet I can get you straight to them. Until then their time is too valuable to be asking those questions, and that's why I'm here."

We actually had a few customers do that... some actually listened. Others just bitched and they got to talk to me for a few hours.

Of course the real trick was if they did all that ... they would still almost never talk to engineering because the problem was fixed.

I almost never answer my phone. On the very rare occasions when it's actually an internal call, it's usually something that could have been conveyed over email, or something that should have been submitted as a ticket for us to prioritize.

@EmberQuill

The worst is when it isn't thought out...

Had a job for six years...

Got a call, for the first time, after about three and a half years. Kind of just a knee jerk reaction...

Me: “yo, what the fuck?”

Client: “um yeah, maybe this is the wrong line, but I have a problem with ABC software.”

Me, kind of still in character: “yeah Jack, that’s mine. the fuck up with software?”

Guy explains the problem. I make a ticket. Fix it. Email them back.

Nobody at any level ever mentioned it, but that phone never rang again.