Three Ringy-Dingy.....

Okay, so I hit the publish post button too soon after Two Ringy-Dingy. I'm new at this, can you tell?
I've worked for this company for 21 years and the largest amount of my time has been spent answering phones. I have been hung up on more times than I can count when I tell the caller the person they want to speak with is not in. I have been cussed at and cussed out. I've had crank callers who really think it's fun to play with the name of this company which could be pronounced exactly as the F-bomb word. On the good side of the coin, I received a customer service call from someone I knew growing up in a small town in Nebraska. That was way cool! But...the calls that really annoy me are the cold calls coming in to the executives that go way beyond the pale. For example, yesterday a cold call came in for our CFO who is out of the office until June 1st. Instead of just saying they would contact him later, the person on the other end of the phone says, "oh, that's a long time to be out of the office". So, now you know they are wanting to know why he's out of the office for that long, etc. After about 5 seconds of total silence from me, I asked if there was anything else I could do for them and the person gave an embarassed little chuckle and said "no" and immediately hung up. Fact is, the CFO had major surgery yesterday morning. If the call had come from someone we do business with and have known for awhile, I MIGHT have told them, but a perfect stranger....I don't think so. I get this all the time. Our President is out of the office for an indefinite amount of time as he is running our factory in another state at present. When I tell callers he is out indefinitely, I get questions like "is he ill?", "oh, he's no longer with the company?", "boy, it must be nice to take that long of a vacation". They make assumptions that are not necessary, and they get no answer from me. If I want them to know, I'll tell them outright. In the meantime, take my answer for what it's worth and call again some other time. Four Ringy-Dingy.......