Phone Manners for Mother Led Marketers

My poor husband has this futile dream whereby some day when someone phones here with a business question, he will be able to answer the phone without having half a dozen children in various stages of intelligibility and language skills trying to beat him to the punch. It disconcerts people when they phone here to ask for us to have the phone answered by at least four children simultaneously, all yelling "HELLO!" at the same time. You always know when there is illness in the house, because the phone will be answered on the second ring instead of the first half of the first ring. Illness slows them down a trifle.

Has anyone else yet discovered where the "child" magnet in the phone is located? You know -- that little magnet that is activated as soon as you phone someone, or someone phones you? If I ever find it, I am going to rip it out and stomp on it. I can be working away peacefully on some project, but as soon as the phone rings, or as soon as I dial someone, the child magnet in the phone is activated and all of a sudden I am lost in a sea of children who all clamor for my attention at the same time.

Today I had two business calls in a row. I had taken the precaution of shutting and locking the office door before answering the business line. I think however, I need a soundproof room for conducting business. It sometimes sounds like a gang of tough cats are having a melee in the background around here. On this occasion I had not only my Dainty Doodle, but also my son Garnet and granddaughter Kee Kee Boo crying through the door, and over and above that was the sound of my husband telling everyone to be quiet at the top of his voice cuz Mom/Grammy was on the phone doing business. Fortunately, when you are doing Mother Led Marketing, you are usually talking to another MLM'er who has her own cat melee happening in the background too, so they understand the occasional bellow and howl.

Since we have gotten a separate line for business calls, the incidence of children taking important business messages and then promptly losing them has receded somewhat. Now if only I could convince them not to let everyone who calls know that I am on the potty and can't come to the phone right now...