From Jessica Gorst-Williams Q. I very much enjoy my job
as financial products consumer champion on a national newspaper. However, friends (whom I have not seen for a while), strangers and acquaintances of acquaintances often ring up late at night on weekends and launch straight into the first episode of what will clearly be longrunning soap operas about financial malpractices of which they are the victims. They sometimes talk for 20 minutes without even asking how my cat is, let alone for some family news. All of these people expect me to be fascinated by their circumstances and take umbrage when I give them short shrift. This kind of thing is to be expected at parties, and you can move on. The phone, though, when you are preoccupied, is more of an ambush. How can I explain that, though I am happy to help, I do not often feel like doing so after hours?
A. Of course you don’t. You must be shattered. You singlehandedly help thousands of people each year and recover about £1 million per annum for readers of your Jessica Investigates column in the Telegraph. You deserve full recognition in the next honours list. Deal with this problem by interrupting such callers to say that your telephone is about to run out of battery so they must be quick. Then cut them off. When ‘caller display’ shows they are ringing straight back, click them on to an answering service which announces, ‘Jessica will deal with your problems between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday to Friday. Please call back then.’
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