Don't worry, there's chocolate coming.

A submitted tale...

The first member of reception staff to arrive switches the phone settings from 'absent' to 'present', goes through the voice-mail, responds to anything urgent, and then checks emails.
My colleague came in, and found almost 20 missed calls from the previous evening, and around 10 from early that morning, but no messages left. 
About 5 minutes before opening, the phone rang.

"Oh so you do have staff! I assumed that you were too busy drinking tea or playing croquet to bother even phoning me back! When do you actually open today?"

"Our hours are 12.00 to 4.30 on weekdays, I'm sorry if that wasn't clear in our voice-mail message when you called. Because you called after 4.30, and then before 12.00, there was no-one here to take your call, again I apologise if that wan't clear. And please be assured that I would have returned your call, but regrettably didn't have a number to return your call to."

"...well, Thank you!"

The gentleman had called almost 30 times, but hadn't listened to a word of our instantly played voice-mail message, preferring instead to immediately hang-up, get increasingly frustrated and continue wasting his own time.
The staff member was awarded that week's chocolate biscuit for handling an unpleasant visitor.

I am both impressed and vaguely concerned that this venue/team has a weekly award for having handled an unpleasant visitor. That either indicates a good sense of humour, or a worrying necessity for boosting morale in the face of unrelenting stupidity.   

If you have a tale of museum, art gallery or heritage venue woe or comedy, do drop a line in, and it may even become a cartoon of it's own!

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