"Could I speak to ..."

I hate my voice. It really really gets to me now. I actually can be blissfully happy with things until the point at which I open my mouth! I no longer like how I sound or what I say!

So because this bit of me isn't quite sorted out yet (it matches the rest to be honest) I obviously have all the fun you'd expect when phoning customer services: "Yes sir, we can sort that out for you", "Could I speak to Fiona?", "Are you the account holder?", "Erm, have you changed your name?", etc.

Unless the person is REALLY nice, chatty, and friendly (like the lovely girl at MBNA I talked to ... hint: anyone at MBNA reading this, I'd really appreciate some mony off my bill for this free publicity I just gave you ... please? Pretty please?) I generally don't enjoy the conversation and feel bad about how I sounded afterwards.

But I just had the slightly opposite experience. Someone phoned asking to speak to "Mr" (it was an account for the house and I'm not bothering to change names on those, except maybe to remove me and put B on instead). Anyway, I felt a bit odd saying "Yes, that's me" but couldn't really get out of it.

During the conversation I realised that I actually didn't sound too bad and I was clearly making much more of an effort to avoid sounding like a "Mr" though obviously there was no pressure to do so.

I'm sure there's an obvious lesson there! More practice ahead I think.