“Jimmy’s Gourmet Assmeats, do this be delivery or pickup?”
Above greeting courtesy of “I Feel Sick #1: A Book About a Girl”, by Jhonen Vasquez.
Nothing earth-shakingly amusing, I fear.
Home: Either “Southbury Annex, Akatsukami speaking”, or just “Hello”, depending on whether I’m working or not.
Office: “Southbury, Akatsukami”.
Answering machine: “You’ve reached <number>. If you’re a telemarketer, don’t even think about calling this number again. Otherwise, please leave your name and number, and we’ll get back to you within 24 hours.”
My answering machine used to say, “I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you leave your name and number, I’ll get back to you when I sober up”. For some reason, however, wagimoko objected to this.
I answer with a simple “hello”.
but…
/hijack/
A few weeks ago, I answered the phone and no one was there.
A friend of mine was visiting and sitting in the living room with me, so she could hear my end of the conversation.
It went like this…
“Hello?..
Oh, HI Regis!
Sure I’ll be glad to.
um hmmm… okaaaay…
The answer is “Kuala Lumpur”
Yes, I’m 100 percent sure.
Okay, good luck!”
I put the phone down and didn’t say a word about it. She must have stared at me for a full minute before she stammered … “ww-w–was that the Millionare Show?”
That’s when I lost control and started laughing.
I still have the bruise on my arm where she punched me.
To be fair, somebody told me that someone did something like that on a talk show, and I just couldn’t let the moment pass without trying it.
/here endeth the hijack/
“Berkeley Street Bordello and House of Pleasure, how may I direct your call?”
Another one I used to use when I had caller ID … telemarketers showed up as “Number Unknown” because of their phone systems, but my dad’s work showed up the same way. So for a while, every time the box said “Number Unknown,” even if my dad was home, I’d answer with “Hello, are you my dad?” I got a lot of amusing responses to that one.
At work:* “This is Bumbazine.”*
At home, I don’t answer the phone. I have a machine for that purpose specifically because we get about a dozen calls a day from telemarketers. But back before we got onto everybodys lists I would normally just say “Hello?” unless I felt like messing with people. Then I’d either say* “Forward torpedo room”* or *“Main gate, St. Peter speaking.” *
Back in high school, I once answered the phone, “Heaven, God speaking.” Turned out to be a particularly devout woman from the church calling to ask my mom if she could make sandwiches for a funeral. She was not amused.
Now, I stick to non-offensive greetings like, “Mishell’s House of Pain, how may I spank you?”
At work: “Wonko’s desk- Wonko speaking.”
At home it varies- sometimes I say the above (after a long day) sometimes it’s “Yo-”, “Yes?” or sometimes even “hello.”
I love to mess with telemarketers. My cat’s name is the listing for the phonebook, so I can sometimes tell immediately. When I’m feeling silly enough, I actually ask him if he wants to talk on the phone, and demand to know what company the person is calling from. People usually figure out after I use the words “scamper” “scramble” and “meow” a few times.
-
“Boogers and poop department.”
-
“Larry’s Buttstick Emporium!”
-
“waaaaaaaayyyyyyyy?” (typical taiwanese phone greeting, sort of like “hello”, but “waaaaaaaaaayyyyyy” is only used for the phone)
-
“Meyow?” (d’oh!)
-
Hi Opal!
i’m soooooooo unoriginal… i think i’ll start using Booker57’s… 
lessee what my friends make of that… :innocent angel smiley:
Forgot to mention that Friend sometimes answers with “Vito’s Massage Parlor!”. Once upon a time, I used to answer with “Hotel California!”
I do that when my girlfriend rings me. An ex of mine was Chinese (well, I assume she still is), and TheLoadedDoggette gets a little jealous about her. So, when I see my girlfriend’s number appear on the screen, I can’t help giving a sultry “Wei?”. Man, that pisses her off. Small mind that I have, I still haven’t tired of it. 
My friend Jason had the absolute best answering-machine message in the world.
Actually he had several of them. Witty guy, that. But my favourite two:
“Satanic evil monks are comin’ to getcha!” BEEEEEP
That one was my fault; I dated a guy who revealed to me a month into our relationship that he used to be a Satanist but was now looking at monkhood (like prospective monks date? wtf?) … Okie, that was all well and good, it explained why he never made an attempt to kiss me in that month But after some very very bizarre things happened I broke up with him, at which point he actually - I am not making this up, it happened - threatened to put a Satanic curse on me and then went into my car while I was at work and used a switchblade to stab a toy rat and some fake blood to my upholstery.
The Caiata person was not amused. She was, however, muchly amused upon hearing that message on Jason’s machine!
Then - I don’t know if any of you are really familiar with Aeon Flux, but there’s one episode (a short I think - “War” maybe? Can’t remember which one …) wherein a lot of the Breen guards are running around guarding Trevor Goodchild, and on the telecom monitors and such they speak, but it’s all garble, all complete and total gibberish. His answering machine used to be just like that.
The machine would pick up and there was like four minutes of gibberish, then a loud beep. The first time I heard it I was stunned … “argleagrbarglahaarhglahgeabhiadmarhgihgaghaghghe… BEEEEEEEEEP”
“uhhhhh … uhhhhhhhh … OH! I get it! Breen guards! Cute Jay! Now pick up the damned phone!”
(Breen is how you spell it, right? I know the actual name of the city is Bregha or something, but they refer to them as ‘Breens’ right? I very definitely remember seeing that somewhere on the DVD …)
Personally I don’t have any particularly clever things to say on my answering machine or when I pick up the phone. I used to answer the home phone just like I did at work: “Thank you for calling Papa John’s, this is Caiata, how may I help you?” Just out of habit, of course, not because I thought it was cool. It stopped about a month after I left that job.
I considered myself way ahead of the game by discouraging my parents from rapping on their answering machine back in '93. I couldn’t in good conscience ever call my home if there was even the remotest chance I would be greeted by aging-white-suburban-gangsta-rap; instead I convinced them to let me do the message. It was something like,
“Hi. This is the 90’s. You know the routine. Bye.” BEEEP
Everyone thought it was “disrespectful”. Now every time I call them I fear the aging-white-suburbia rap; luckily in their older old age they have mellowed and have your standard “you’ve reached xxx-xxxx. Please leave a message.”
Rap is -almost- better. sigh
“Hi, I’m deaf, I can’t hear you so don’t call back”