That was several years ago now. I was in this weird hybrid position where I was NOC, sysadmin, and sales engineer all at once. I was mostly sysadmin. Our receptionist quit without notice, we had no manager; we were mostly left to our devices unless a customer complained then we got hauled into a meeting room and yelled at by the CTO.

Some VP or another walked over and went "Hey the receptionist just quit, we're going to temporarily send the front of house line to the NOC" and walked off. No training (which BTW: if you take front-of-house calls you need EXTENSIVE training in media handling, social engineering, information disclosure... I will fight anyone who disagrees), no direction.

This went on for about a week. Whoever's NOC line rang just did the best they could. After 2 or 3 instances of someone woefully untrained to handle the flood of trash a major org gets to their main line and actually routing a call they shouldn't have to the CEO, we got a 1 page email listing directives like "Never forward calls to the CEO" and "If someone identifies as media, tell them you cannot talk to them and hang up"

I politely responded asking when a permanent replacement would be hired and, if the answer was 'not soon' maybe we should get better training and guidance. It got no reply.

This forwarding also included a phone put out front in the mantrap with a sign saying "Dial X to be buzzed in". That went to us; we had no training on physical security and no calendar access to verify "I'm here for a meeting with Y". We let in everyone without question until someone got in who shouldn't have and we got another terse email saying "Someone not you lot must let people in"

So then we started wasting time trying to find people to validate buzz-ins. Keep in mind we're still a NOC and ops team through all this.

Somewhere in there we dropped a buzz-in because we were slammed with an outage so the directive came down that each day one person would be picked to actually sit at the front desk. At this point we were 2 months in to "Temporary replacement" with no indication of them even interviewing a replacement receptionist (keep in mind we'd have to let them in if they were interviewing so we KNEW).

When I promoted out of that team 6-8mo later, they were still the receptionists, with no training or guidance. It worked "well enough" for management so they didn't bother paying for another hire to do the job properly. Before I promoted out I started doing a shit job on purpose because I resented this so much. I forwarded anyone anywhere they wanted to go, I let people in despite the policy, etc. It wasn't my job, I wasn't trained for it, fuck it.

And to be clear: being a receptionist is absolutely not "beneath vee" or anything like that. That job is far, far harder than people give it credit for. I am not trained or equipped for it and ESPECIALLY not doing it as a second entire job on top of a first entire job.