Can I speak to your mother?

[Aggie_Ama]

My family practice is an office with two GP for adults, 3 peds and one pediatric Nurse Practioner. The pediatrics is probably one of the bigger groups in the small suburb they are located, there are rarely many adults without kids in there.

This morning my cell phone rang "May I please speak to the mother or father of Amanda _____?" I recognized the number and started laughing "Well, I am 27 and thought I was an adult but you can have my mom's number if you need to speak to her." The nurse then started laughing and admitted she makes most of her calls for the pediatrics side.

It was a fun little chuckle to start my busy and a bit stressful morning.

[SadieKate]

Should she have said "May I?"

~ SK who was known at an early age to tell callers the same thing.

[jesvetmed]

When I said "Can I..?" my dad always said, "I don't know, are you able?"

Aggie: I've called pet owners before and asked for the pet by name (by mistake of course!), and they get a fairly good chuckle from that! "Hi, this is the vet... can I please speak to BUDDY?"

[Aggie_Ama]

Should she have said "May I?"

~ SK who was known at an early age to tell callers the same thing.

I wonder if she said "can" or "may"? I have both on here and I do know which one is right. My mom always said "I don't know, can you?"

[SadieKate]

My mom always said "I don't know, can you?"

That was one of my alternate responses, depending on my mood.

For the appropriate ocassion, there was also "to whom do you wish to speak?"

Our phone number is one digit off from the landfill, so we're coming up with good responses for "is this the dump?" I love the people who argue that we've published the number and they haven't misdialed. Morons.

[jesvetmed]

Our ER vet office is one digit off from a local large medical clinic. Man do we get some confused people calling! And they don't listen when we tell them that we are an ANIMAL clinic... they just keep asking to talk to the doctor or nurse about their problems!

[smilingcat]

Our ER vet office is one digit off from a local large medical clinic. Man do we get some confused people calling! And they don't listen when we tell them that we are an ANIMAL clinic... they just keep asking to talk to the doctor or nurse about their problems!

Oh dear...

may be you should ask "if they would like to see a primate specialist? or canine specialists? "(not demeaning dawgs since we have two wonderful pups a golden atached to my hip and a lab who thinks he's a great pyranese (sp) ).

We are vetinary clinic, we don't do people.

Other thing you can do is humor them and ask whole bunch of questions then ask them if it pertains to fluffy or max the dog.

okay I can be pretty bad.
Smilingcat

[NbyNW]

I once answered my door thinking it was a delivery and instead it was some random person who was asking for donations/selling something. But they didn't get very far with me by asking if my mother was home. I'm well into my 30s and my mother doesn't live with me!

I politely told them my mother wasn't home and they wished me a good day and went away.

[Pax]

My ex has the same name/phone book listing as a local Sociology professor, we used to get calls in the middle of the night during midterms and finals asking for extensions on papers, test retaking, and general oh-please-god-don't-flunk-me. We used to tell them they had the wrong number and try to go back to sleep...after the umpteenth wake up call of the night one time I just started telling the kids "sure, I'll give you another week on that paper".

[Aggie_Ama]

I once answered my door thinking it was a delivery and instead it was some random person who was asking for donations/selling something. But they didn't get very far with me by asking if my mother was home. I'm well into my 30s and my mother doesn't live with me!

I politely told them my mother wasn't home and they wished me a good day and went away.

This happened to me more than once after we bought our house. I was 25 when we moved in two years ago and look very young for my age. I am often told I look like I am about 16-18.

I either say my parents are unavailable or lay into them with a tirade "I am the home owner, far past living with my parents, would you believe I am old enough to have completed a four year degree, worked a couple years and then bought this home?!" or "Since you are looking for my parents, they live in _____ try to sell to them because I am not buying anything for MY home from you." I really hate solicitors.