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First voice pass... YES!!
I'm very proud to announce, I just achieved my first "telephone pass"! I passed as female over the telephone... meaning they knew I was a woman simply by hearing my voice, without me having to disclose my gender explicitly. (Actually happened last week, but didn't have time to post about it till today.)
This is after about 16 months of hard work on my voice, doing daily training exercises, stretching my vocal chords, recording myself and playing it back, practicing reading passages, going to speech therapy sessions. All that work is finally paying off!
Ever since I changed my name legally, my I've developed a new strategy for dealing with spam callers. I've noticed that often if you don't answer, they don't leave a message and then just call back the next day, and the next, and the next... until you pick up. In many cases, I've found, even if I pick up and ask them to remove my name from the list, they say they'll do it but they never do... and then you get a week or two of silence before the cycle starts over again.
So now whenever I get a spam call, I pick up and practice my female voice. When they ask for my deadname, I say "sorry, who??" and act like I've never heard of that person before. I tell them they've got the wrong number, and never to call me again. Since it's been a year and a half since I started using my new name, nobody whom I actually know or do business with should be calling asking for my old name--they all have my current name already. So if someone is asking for "Mr. Jones" I know that it's a spammer whom I don't want to deal with. One time I even answered saying "I'm sorry but that person no longer exists". But I realized after hanging up that it probably sounded pretty weird, and I think they took it as me having a death in the family, and they felt bad... so I now just say it's a wrong number.
Every time in the past this has happened, no matter how hard I try to sound female, they still assume that I'm male, calling me "sir" and "Mr.". One time I had already said "sorry, who?" in the beginning but I guess he didn't hear me, so he just kept going for like 5 minutes, trying to explain all about why I should donate blah, blah, blah... I patently waited for a chance, and then finally when he said "so, what do you think Mr. Jones?" I said "umm... I'm a woman, and I don't know any Mr. Jones." This is USUALY how these calls go, pretty embarrassing for me, but I force myself to do it because it's good practice.
So last week... same thing happens, but somehow... I pull it off! He asks if Mr. Jones is there, and I say "who?" and he says "oh I'm terribly sorry Ms. Jones! Is your husband there?" We continue the conversation and I don't think he ever doubts that I'm female. SUCCESS!!! Looking forward to many more conversations like this. If I can reproduce this, I'm really going to be excited about talking to spammers now :-)
Here is the recording of our call (I record all my phonecalls now so I can analyze what I sounded like and what I did wrong):
I'm terribly sorry Mrs. Jones
This is after about 16 months of hard work on my voice, doing daily training exercises, stretching my vocal chords, recording myself and playing it back, practicing reading passages, going to speech therapy sessions. All that work is finally paying off!
Ever since I changed my name legally, my I've developed a new strategy for dealing with spam callers. I've noticed that often if you don't answer, they don't leave a message and then just call back the next day, and the next, and the next... until you pick up. In many cases, I've found, even if I pick up and ask them to remove my name from the list, they say they'll do it but they never do... and then you get a week or two of silence before the cycle starts over again.
So now whenever I get a spam call, I pick up and practice my female voice. When they ask for my deadname, I say "sorry, who??" and act like I've never heard of that person before. I tell them they've got the wrong number, and never to call me again. Since it's been a year and a half since I started using my new name, nobody whom I actually know or do business with should be calling asking for my old name--they all have my current name already. So if someone is asking for "Mr. Jones" I know that it's a spammer whom I don't want to deal with. One time I even answered saying "I'm sorry but that person no longer exists". But I realized after hanging up that it probably sounded pretty weird, and I think they took it as me having a death in the family, and they felt bad... so I now just say it's a wrong number.
Every time in the past this has happened, no matter how hard I try to sound female, they still assume that I'm male, calling me "sir" and "Mr.". One time I had already said "sorry, who?" in the beginning but I guess he didn't hear me, so he just kept going for like 5 minutes, trying to explain all about why I should donate blah, blah, blah... I patently waited for a chance, and then finally when he said "so, what do you think Mr. Jones?" I said "umm... I'm a woman, and I don't know any Mr. Jones." This is USUALY how these calls go, pretty embarrassing for me, but I force myself to do it because it's good practice.
So last week... same thing happens, but somehow... I pull it off! He asks if Mr. Jones is there, and I say "who?" and he says "oh I'm terribly sorry Ms. Jones! Is your husband there?" We continue the conversation and I don't think he ever doubts that I'm female. SUCCESS!!! Looking forward to many more conversations like this. If I can reproduce this, I'm really going to be excited about talking to spammers now :-)
Here is the recording of our call (I record all my phonecalls now so I can analyze what I sounded like and what I did wrong):
I'm terribly sorry Mrs. Jones