One Phone, Two Phone. Old Phone, New Phone.

So, they hired an Office Manager, (let's call her Layla) and since they hadn't decided on a place for her to sit, she sat at the Reception desk. (Later we learned that that would be where the office manager would sit from then on, but that's another story.)

At the reception desk, there is a console phone. Console phones are better known as reception phones and they can hold somewhere between 30 and 40 lines. Because no one knows how things actually work, and because Layla refused to use it, they set up a separate 16 button handset beside the console. Her logic being, "I'm not a receptionist, and I won't be answering the phones like one."

Here's why I'm writing this story, every call that has come in to that phone, she has answered and transferred to the appropriate person. So now there are two phones on that desk that serve the same purpose, all because she refuses to learn how to use them and or the company refuses to do away with tradition.

Update:  The new Office Manager has spearheaded a campaign to get rid of the traditional phone and use the smaller handset. Partly because she doesn't want to use it and learn how, partly because it just takes up space on the desk.