Rants

A room to rant and ramble to no one in particular about the little things in life that piss you off.

How have we made something as simple as voice mail so damn complicted?

Years ago on your home phone you had an answering machine, and you had to explain to the caller what was happening. You informed them that it was not you, but a recording of your voice, that you couldn't come to the phone, but if they left a message with their name and phone number you would get back to them. I shortened mine to “You know what this is, you know what to do, you know when to do it.” A friend went one step further, “You know the drill.” This was simple, but people could follow along.

Now we have these complicted voice mail boxes. A voicemail picks up and tells the caller all sorts of options they have before ever getting to the main task of actually leaving a message. You have call back numbers, priority, etc. Most of the time when I get someone's voice mail and I have to go through all these options, I forget what I want to say before I get the chance to leave a message.

My two favorate types of people that leave a message are the person who has to tell you what time and date they called. Most voice mail has this time stamp fuction built in, but these people still do it. They tell you the reason they do that is “In case I see you, you know to ignore the voice mail.” However this same person when they see you will say, “I left you a voice mail” so you don't need to tell me what time you called. The time stamp and a functioning brain has already covered the time function.

The second person, and many times they are the same type of person, is the person that leaves a message that tells you nothing, “Hey, this is Mike, it is Tuesday at 3:45, I will call you back.” Seriously, why did you leave any part of this message? What is the purpose? You did not let me know any information, you just wasted my time.

To all the voice mail service providers: KISS. Keep It Simple Stupid.  Let the person leave a message and that is it. It doesn't have to be anything any more complicted than that. “Leave a message (beeeeep!)” That is it. No call priority, the retriever of the voice mail will assign a priority to what they feel is important. I don't need a call back number, or much of anything else, I just need the caller to leave a freaking message.

To the people leaving a message: I don't need to know what time you called, I don't care. If I did care the time stamp will let me know. What I want to know is WHY you called. What is so important that you needed to reach out and touch me. If you are only going to tell me you will call back later, then don't leave a message telling me you are going to call back later, just call back later.

Thank you.

Leave me a text instead. so much better.

Depends on the situation - if I'm out, I don't check email. If you want to reach me the second I'm free, text me. If you're not in a hurry, email.

I ranted too soon, I received a voice message and this person always leaves the entire "conversation" in a voice mail.  Tells me everything they wanted to say to me in detail which might take several minutes.  ugh  Email is what I prefer also.   I wonder if I can turn off voicemail.

Sun Dec 18 2011 17:25:30 EST from Animal

What annoys me is the people that call for no reason. They just want to
hear another human voice or something.

Or those that call for one little piece of information, then "how's your
day? What'd you have for lunch? Did you eat pancakes this week? I
pooped and it took six wipes to clean up! How much for a gallon of gas
in your neighborhood?" FUCK... Enough already! STFU!

I resemble that remark.

I'm just lonely. 

yeah, let's hear about your sister. Then I can tell you all the ways my sister is awesome, and you can rant some more about how unlucky you are!