What a Monday!

I was scheduled to work at Church this morning...this was planned about a month ago. I had talked to the Office Manager last week because they were changing over the phone system and she needed to not be there this morning...so she had me come in Friday so she could go over the new system with me.

As it turns out when they were setting up the new system there was a glitch with our Pre-School's line. So for now all their calls go to the Church's main line and then have to be transfered back to them.

Yesterday at Church we learned that one of our Members had passed away. So I checked in with the Office Manager to make sure that I didn't need to have any info to give out to other members. At that point we still didn't know anything. Our pastor was out of town on vacation and was flying back that day for the funeral, that we assumed would be on Tuesday.

So this morning I get there and the phones start ringing right away. The first call wouldn't talk back to me (I have my suspicions about this later on) so the second call I didn't answer with my greeting and they of course were concerned that they had misdialed. I appologized for that and had to put them on hold as the other line was also ringing. It was a call for the Pre-school. I sent it to voice mail and went back to the first call. It was the florist confirming the funeral...that I didn't have any info on and I was the only one there...except for the maintainence man. So I took a number to call the florist back.

Turns out the funeral was scheduled for 10am this morning! :O

Call the florist back and get that all arranged. Meanwhile tons of calls are coming for the preschool (they have a summer camp) and no one is there yet as they don't start until 9am and won't get in until 8:45am! I've got moms wondering if they need to bring in snacks and all sorts of weird questions that I don't have any idea about.

I don't know how many calls I took for the preschool. I know of at lest 3 where the calling party was shocked that they had gotten the Church office insead of the preschool. I got another 3 where the calling party had paid no attention to my greeting and started rattling off preschool questions. Finally I had confirmation from another person at the Church that the preschool director had arrived...so I could just forward calls to her. I tried that and no one was answering.

Was there a problem with the phones? I don't know.

So the next call, a lady who called in a few times before, I suggested that I take a message and run it downstairs so I could see what was up. I take it down there and the director says she was with a parent and didn't answer...she didn't know about the routing problem yet. About 2 calls later (after a call from her mother) she comes upstairs to find out what is going on with the phones. I explain it to her and she starts appologizing like crazy for not taking that one call. Turns out the parent she was talking to was just chatting.

I think the calls I got (about 3) were either someone who thought that they had dialed the preschool and were confused...or we have some weirdo who calls up churches and doesn't speak.

Since no one was expecting a funeral today...the Church was not ready for it. So we were all scrambling trying to straighten the place up. I had to hide the sign-up for the annual "Habitat for Humanity" golf tournament in the office along with the Food Club (buy supermarket certificates and the Church gets part of the money.) I also moved a few things and picked up a broken cookie from the floor.

The funeral went very well. The preschool calls calmed down after about 10:30 or so. LOL! I feel sorry for the person on phones tomorrow. Hopefully they get that all straightened out quickly. The office manager did come in for a few minutes at one point. She was mostly there for the counters though as they always have questions.

That's about it...I'm getting the laundry done now so that DH can leave town on Wednesday. Darly & I need to start planning some fun stuff to do while the cat's out of town. hee hee any good ideas?