I've been working the service end of a stock brokerage's research department for 10 years (!) and I've tried, over this time, to see some pattern in the way people address me on the phone. I would have to say that the worst callers here tend to be people who don't introduce themselves: we don't take calls from the public, so 99.999% of the time, it's a broker or someone else internal, and they may be mean but they're smart enough to know that if we know who is treating us like such shit we will call their manager and raise hell. A decent percentage of mean (and/or helplessly twitty, which is sometimes just as bad) brokers are from our northeast offices -- and I hate playing the regional card, but they're just in a much different environment. I was going to say they're in a more fast-paced world than Louisville, KY; but really, these are simply people who use that theory as an excuse to be jerks. I don't buy that being from NJ automatically makes you evil, yet our brokers are using certain perceptions to their advantage and my annoyance.

Both of the above groups are bad; hardly anyone who calls ever actually wants to speak to me (something I'm rather okay with), and the callers who tend to irritate me the most are inevitably the brokers who are a.) freaking out about something we have no control over (other depts., the Dow, hurricanes, etc.) and/or b.) too &^%$#@! lazy to look up readily available information on the company intranet. Which is why despite our pharmaceuticals analyst being at this company for 20 years, and despite this info being two mere clicks off the company homepage, people still call me as ask, "Yeah, who's the guy that follows Pfizer?"

My job would be a lot happier if they'd take my phone away. Or if they'd hire another secretary. Oh, how I wish.