I should probably begin by explaining what I do all day.  I'm a secured loan underwriter - people who want secured loans go to their financial adviser or mortgage broker, who then comes to us.  We find the best deal for them, send out the documents, get everything back in and then send it all off to the people who actually lend the money.  I'm literally the middle man.  As such I get all the hassle from all sides (broker, client & lender) day in day out. Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy my job and 95% of the people I talk to are really good guys/gals who I get on with really well.  The other 5% however usually put homicidal thoughts in my head. I spend a good deal of my day on the phone to either clients, brokers, valuers, mortgage lenders et al trying to get information out of them.  We also currently have no receptionist so everyone in the office has to pitch in answering the phones.  I'll be coming back to this last point later.

So now you have a vague idea what I do, without further ado here's my top 5 list of things that just plain piss me off day in day out.

5.)  Liars.  I hate liars.  Liars are people who tell you they haven't received something in the post, so you spend 30 minutes preparing a second set and get it out to them, only to receive the original set you sent them back a week later.  Liars are people who you go to for help or guidance, get a clear answer from, act on information they have provided... then it turns out they were actually wrong and they deny every having had the conversation.  Liars are people who will tell you they have posted something to you just to get you off the phone because your presence actually requires that they do some work. You discover this 3 days later when you go to chase them up again and they mess up by forgetting the lie they originally told you.  People who think that their lies won't get found out - "No I've never missed any payments on my mortgage!".  People who are just plain ridiculous - "Well I bought my house 2 months ago for £100,000 and now magically it's worth £250,000 so please lend me £100,000!"  Yeah... I hate liars; I come across a lot of them.

4.)  The 5:00 caller.  These people wait until just moments before 5:00 to call me - usually they have an inbuilt sensor which can detect the fact that I already have my coat and scarf on, and have just come back to my desk to pick my bag up.  I find it impossible to ignore a ringing phone, maybe I just care too much about giving good service... Anyway these people wait until I'm ready and raring to go home, and then phone me to tell me they are going to send me the documents I sent them back.  And that's not enough for them - they feel the need to go through the entire list I've written for them and discuss every item in amazing, excruciating, infuriating detail with me.  Usually this takes until approximately 5:45.  

3.)  Then there's the 5:05 e-mailer.  This is a breed of human who knows I leave the office at 5:00, (unless I've been snared by the 5:00 caller of course) and therefore waits until 5:05 to e-mail me with some form of deal-breaking news because they are too scared to phone me about it.  Clearly, reading it at 8:45 the next morning when I'm still pissed off about then fact that I'm back in the office yet again - usually after an unbearably stressful journey to work (yes, there'll be yet another rant coming about THAT one) -  rather than in my nice warm bed will not enrage me, but rather break it nice and gently for me.  It's obviously a better solution than phoning me in the afternoon when I just want to go home and don't care enough to get angry.

2.)  People who phone me with queries instead of filling in our enquiry form.  Now to be honest, 99% of the time I don't mind this as it's usually quicker for everybody involved.  Most people know the basic details that I'll need to be able to give them a rough idea of the sort of deal we can do, but sometimes you get the people who think that with almost no details we can give them an exact quote down to the last penny per month and expect you to spew it out without blinking.  Sorry, I'm not Carol Vorderman.  And even if I were, I need a few more details than "I've got this guy who wants £10,000, how much will that cost per month?"  I'm sorry - our enquiry form has about 35 questions on it for a REASON you retard.  And there's a direct correlation between these people and the REAL annoyance I was getting to here - people who ring me with an enquiry and then put ME on hold while they get the details I need.  I don't even want to talk to you in the first place, and now *I* am stuck on hold!

1.)  People who think I'm a receptionist and should, therefore, take all the crap they feel like dishing out.  It seems a large proportion of people are physically incapable of actually listening to the words that come out of the end of the phone into their ear.  We get a lot of calls for our insurance department coming through on the main switchboard, and a lot of people seem to be unable to comprehend that I do NOT work in insurance, and know absolutely nothing whatsoever about it.  It's also obviously my fault that they have had a bad experience of some sort with that department.  Insurance is severely understaffed at the moment and as such it's rare that we can catch any of the girls when they are actually not on the phone, so it's almost impossible to actually be able to put a call through to them.  Explaining that to people sometimes feels like trying to explain astrophysics to a goldfish.  "Let me just give you the policy number, I'm sure you can help me!"  Clearly I am also personally responsible for the fact that nobody from insurance has yet returned their call.  It's probably also my fault that their policy didn't cover whatever disaster has befallen them and caused the extreme bout of rudeness which is now being vented on me.  Obviously everything that has ever gone wrong in the entire history of the world is my fault!