Dear Answering Machine.. We're Through

I don't remember a lot of significant inventions in my lifetime, but I distinctly remember the day we got our first answering machine. After having it a few days, I couldn't imagine how we ever got by without it. The days of sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring, or being fearful you might miss that all important call were over. Hallelujah. I never thought my love affair with the answering machine would end.

These days, however, I loathe having to listen to voice mail messages. Actually, it's been this way for a few years at least. I once accumulated 34 new voice mails in the course of a busy day, and I asked my then-assistant to listen to them and try to accurately capture the callers' moods, so that I didn't have to listen to the rants myself. I have messages on my cell phone that I don't listen to for weeks at a time, and don't even get me started on my home office land line voice mail... that damn red message light taunts me to no end. Usually there are between 12 and 23 messages at any given time, before I finally muster up the strength to go through and listen/delete them (or not listen/delete them, as the case may be).

It's not that I don't want to talk to people. I do. Especially over instant messenger. Or in person. If I am at my desk, I reply almost immediately to any IM I get. Text messages I also respond to very quickly. At my company, almost no one ever calls you without scheduling it ahead of time or IMing you first to say "hey, can I call you now?" It almost seems rude not to do that first.

And I do enjoy the phone, but only to catch up with old friends. For these calls, I generally make a phone date, so that we actually have time to really spend talking, undistracted. Working from home with an endless amount of conference calls has just worn me out for all other calls.

I never could have predicted that I would prefer people sending short text messages or emails to actually listening to a recording of their voice. Who has the time though? If I see on my caller ID that you called me, and I want to call you back, then there you go - I will. I'm sure part of my frustration is so many of the calls I get at home are unsolicited calls like telemarketers and political campaigns. Land lines like disappearing beacons for telemarketers and political campaigns.

So enough of this confusion. I decided to act. At least people should be fairly warned that I hate voice mail and there is almost no chance I will listen to whatever messages are left for me. I just changed my outgoing home phone message to say, "Hello, you've reached 718-726-XXXX, I no longer listen to these voice mail messages, so please try to reach me on my cell or via email. Thank you and have a nice day!" So far, everyone that has called has hung up right after the word messages. Brilliant! I would have just turned off the voice mail from picking up, but I don't want the phone to ring and ring.