Rant of the Day…
My distaste for Voice Mail is widely known among my friends… I don’t like to get ‘em, I don’t like to leave ‘em. I prefer to distill my thoughts down to 160 characters or less of TXTy goodness, and I prefer to receive the same. I hate listening to long winded sales people leaving me all the blah blah before GETTING TO THE POINT and leaving me a phone number. I hate it when people leave me “OMG! I have some huge important thing/need/question/news to talk to you about, call me back” messages.
These things most of you know about me already.
Oh, and I hate HATE “para espanol, marque dos” automated prompts when I call places too, in the ever increasingly futile attempt to contact a human at customer service.
But I have a new annoyance, and I’m sharing in the hopes that if enough people start noticing how dumb it is, it will go away.
The annoyance, in a nutshell is the personalized voicemail greeting which is followed by automated-voice-lady instructions on HOW TO LEAVE A VOICEMAIL! Um, hello? Anyone who hasn’t encountered the “beep” and knows what to do after it doesn’t really need instruction, they need a time machine in which to ride back from 1975 to the present…
You know the message, it goes something like this… “Hi, this is Turd Ferguson. I can’t take your call right now but if you’ll leave me a message after the beep, I’ll get back to you” (now comes the automated lady) “To leave this person a message, you may begin speaking after the tone. To page this person, press 5, blah blah blah…. BEEP!”
It’s annoying enough that the person I wanted to talk to can’t come to the phone, and then that I have to listen to their (sometimes painfully witty) greeting, THEN I have to be told how to leave a message? I mean, why stop there? Why not tell me how to modulate my vocal chords and move my tongue such as to make speech? Why not inform me of my other options, such as hanging up the phone, whistling dixie, or poking myself in the eye with a sharp stick?
Bottom line, this wastes my time, and is redundant, and it wastes my time. (ha ha)
If this annoys you, too, please let me know after the beep… 