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February 05, 2005
Useless Factoid of the Day #3: Two random facts about Vishy's life
Sorry I haven't blogged in a while. Work has been busy and even my weekends have been otherwise gainfully occupied. The two factoids are truly useless -- they are only about me and will be of no use to you whatsoever. If that bugs you, then what are you doing here on my blog?
Factoid #1: Vishy's voice
Welcome to the Customer Care Line. This call may be recorded for quality assurance. Your call is very important to us, please stay on the line... Me: Hello? Hello? This is Nicole with [credit card]. Your name and account number please? Vishwanath Venugopalan. I'll spell it out for you. First name V-I-S-H-W-A-N-A-T-H Last name V-E-N-U-G-O-P-A-L-A-N ... O-P-L-A-M? No. O-P-A-L-A-N as in Nancy. Okay, what can I do for you today, ma'am? Actually, it's Sir. What can I do for you? I need to report a lost card. Okay, let me bring that up for you... [Hold music... My attention wanders around the room. I think of food, various attractive women, work...] MA'AM, MA'AM, are you there?? I told you I was a Sir. Thanks for holding, ma'am. I'll need to get some security information from you...I don't have a very deep voice. The pitch of my voice fluctuates with my mood, my general level of excitement and even maybe my level of hydration. Unless I am sick, however, it stays within reasonable limits from what people consider to be my average voice. Neither me nor my friends think of me as very feminine sounding. However, about half the time, I get mistaken for a woman on the phone. Most of these times, my repeated entreaties to address me with a title appropriate for my sex are ignored -- something that pisses me off to no end. I have mostly given up on correcting their impressions of my sex, especially if I have been put on a long hold already and I am impatient to get off the call.
The even stranger thing is that the people who mistake me for a women are overwhelmingly women themselves. It's very rare that male customer service representatives mistake me for a woman. My best theory for this (which I don't really believe in myself) is that I naturally get nervous when talking to *any* woman, even if I am only going to speak to her once. This results in a higher pitch and therefore a higher probability of being mistaken for a woman.
What about other guys who are reading this? Do you have similar experiences?
Factoid #2: My new apartment
I live in apartment number 9-K. If A = 1, B = 2, C = 3 and so on, K = 11.Replace the K with its number and my apartment is 9-11. How afraid should I be?
Posted by Vishy at February 5, 2005 10:22 PM
Comments
I can't help but be reminded of the time you called MIT Medical with a stomach ache and got asked if you had missed any periods lately. Clearly, the gender-bender-ness of your voice extends beyond the confines of credit card companies.
Posted by: Punya at February 18, 2005 07:42 PM