Voice mail? Aaaargh

BRUTALITY FACTOR: Medium

I get directed to voicemail in at least 2 out of 5 calls I make. Might be people don't want to take my calls. But I will definitely not, certainly not, even if I was dying, leave a voicemail. No chance in hell, I say.

It is just a waste of time. The only benefit I see is, you would know if somebody was trying to reach you when your cellphone was out of range, or out of battery. The chances are pretty high if you are on AT&T, or use a Motorola. If you have a combo of both, you can might as well flush down the phone. You never have signal problems with the iPhone, because the battery is almost always certainly dead.

Coming back to the point. Once the call goes into voicemail, the lady from AT&T tells me which number I have reached. Doesn't make sense, because no one knows anybodies number any more. All I do is select the person's name from the phone book and select his phone. So, why say it? And she also tells the subscriber is not reachable and I have reached their voice mail. Well, if he was reachable he would have picked up the phone and not miss sweet voice from AT&T, right? Again, why say it?

Like I wasn't frustrated enough, my friends message (which was recorded when he was in the loo) started playing with echo effects. Saying, how sorry he was for not picking my call and he had other important things to do in life, than to take my call. And then tells me to leave my name and telephone number after the beep. Again he knows I was trying to call, so why leave a name. And, my number. So he can call me back when he's bored or when ever he feels like it.

After this is done. The lady makes an appearance again saying to press 1 if I want to leave a voice mail. Well, why am I there in the first place? And then, she also says I have to leave a voice mail only after the beep. I hear the beep after about two years, by when, my friend would have actually returned my call.

One headache is to leave a mail. The other to listen to the voice mails you have got. Now the sweeter lady from T-Mobile takes over and tells me that I have reached "my voicemail". Well I did dial my voice mail number and the phone did say it was trying to call my voicemail. Duh? Then tells all the stuff I can do with my voice mails and number I could press for each one of them. All I want to do is just listen to them. Before the messages, the kinda lady tells all the information I don't need about the caller. By that time I would have lost my patience and just disconnected.

I started writing this post with a lot of frustration, but at this point I am just tired. The voicemail is such a wonderful innovation, but the implementation is just pathetic. It was probably done by a Russian. 

I do not listen to voicemail unless its from a new number. If its someone I know, I just call them and tell them to repeat it. It saves a lot of time. So I have about a million un-deleted messages, way back from 2005. 

I don't leave voice mails either. Unless, I am in a very very good mood. I just text, instead. People have the assumption that if its important, the person will leave a voice mail. Or else, they wouldn't call back. That doesn't apply for me. Don't leave me voice mails, nor will I leave you one. Just pick up when I call, since I might have called to ask, if you wanted a pair of free concert tickets.