I Can’t Come to the Phone Right Now, So Please Don’t Leave a Message After the Beep.
I get it. Really, I do. You call. I’m busy. (Or sometimes admittedly I’m not busy in the sense of the word busy that would lead you to believe there is something actually going on. Be it work, activities, etc. Sometimes I am busy thinking. Or busy day dreaming. Or busy not being busy. To me, these moments are rare and fleeting. So I may or may not wish to be interupted from my zenlike state of thought or thoughtlessness.)
I digress.
Voicemail comes on. You tell me what you WOULD have told me if I had answered. Or maybe you don’t. Maybe you just provide me with a thoughtful teaser in regards to the subject matter of the call. I have to say that approach is somewhat entertaining. Either way, I am supposed to listen at my earliest convenience, call you back and say ‘I got your message, tell me all about it’ or ‘I can’t believe that’ or something to that effect. I get it.
Here’s the thing. I HATE VOICEMAIL. I don’t like it at all. Listen, if I want to talk to you, I will see your phone number listed on my missed calls list. I will call back. Maybe not in 10 minutes or even in an hour. Hell, maybe not even today. But I see that you called, and I will call you back. If it is urgent, text me. I can instantaneously read your message, decide on my own whether or not this is a dire situation which dignifies an immediate response/callback, and move on with my day.
If you call and leave me a message about something important and then never follow up with an email, or text, or second call, you can’t possibly expect me to listen to the messages knowing that it was important. I’m not psychic.
By the time I listen to the voicemail, the news is old news. Usually. And if it wasn’t I wouldn’t want to have the new news broken to me via voicemail. I am a texter. I love texting. It makes sense. No bullshitting or beating around the bush. No forced interaction that phonecalls create. No awkwardness. Just straight, to the point, facts. Some argue that texts can be misinterpreted and I do agree with that. But it isn’t enough to make me want to call and leave voicemails for everyone everytime I have one little thing to say. It’s overwhelming.
My favorite voicemails are the one’s that say “Alisa, hey. It’s me. Call me back.”
Okay. Stop with those. I KNOW WHO IT IS. I see it! I probably saw it when it rang. Secondly, I can assume that since you thought to call in the first place, that you wish to speak, and since you didn’t speak with me directly, you likely still would like to speak. For that to happen, I should probably call back. See how that worked? I mean, I did get a Master’s degree and everything. But I think this type of rationale does not require an advanced degree.
My second favorite is the hang up after the beep. I am pretty sure there is a 5 second buffer from the last ring to the beep during the “Leave a voicemail yatta yatta” song and dance. You have five whole seconds to find the red ‘end’ button and hang up. Not enough time? Really? HANG UP THE PHONE so I don’t get a full inbox of hangups and then people who actually had a clever and entertaining teaser voicemail can’t get through!
Drives me crazy. I could go all day about how I wish voicemail would just disappear. It’s too much. It’s annoying. I don’t want to spend 5 minutes of my day listening to people tell me to call them back from last week. And a single voicemail isn’t enough to make me go through the “please enter your password” rigamarole and the operator telling me “you have one new message”. AHHH. When does it end? I KNOW I HAVE ONE VOICEMAIL. I see it. It tells me. I don’t need to be reminded again. It’s a headache.
I don’t understand why I am the only one who feels this way. Maybe someone can explain it to me on my voicemail.
