Agreed, but even worse, I frequently used to get voicemails from my mother that were just “hey, it’s mom, call me back” but spoken AS IF SOMEBODY HAD DIED.
Every time I missed a call and checked my voicemail, there was a sad, timid little “hey… it’s mom… call me back when you get the chance 
:(”
Of course she was just calling to talk, but she couldn’t help leaving the voice message as if she were calling to tell me that a truck had run over all of my family pets at once or something.
I agree with the OP, and will try to avoid calling people back that do this. It’s not always bad news, but it’s been bad news enough that it sticks in my mind.
Just say why you’re calling! My SO has always been impressed by my message-leaving skills and has even picked up a few pointers: think of what you’re going to say ahead of time, say it quickly and clearly, slow the fuck down on the phone number*, and if it’s a business call, repeat the phone number & name at the end of the call.
I get 99.9% of my calls returned this way. I even leave messages for friends like this, “Hey, this is Anaamika, just calling to say hi/see if you were busy this weekend/find out what’s up.”
I cannot tell you the amount of times someone has left a long, slow, and above all stupid message on my VM and then raced through the telephone number like a chipmunk on acid.
What about if you’re just leaving a message to let someone know you called, not regarding anything in particular, but just to see what’s up, etc. I dunno, I guess I just don’t have the same problem with it as you do.
Are we related? My mom does the same thing, and I always think a grandparent has died. With sick and elderly family members, something is always going on.
She also has a habit of calling OVER AND OVER AND OVER again if I don’t answer my phone. I typically put my cell phone on vibrate when I’m at work, although I’ve kept the ringer on lately (my brother and sister-in-law are expecting a baby - in fact, she’s at the hospital in labor right now) so that I can get news if necessary. But if I don’t answer my cell phone, she will call constantly for a few hours. I didn’t check it one day for the whole day, and when I took it out of my purse at the end of the day, I saw that my mother had called NINE times. I checked my messages - no messages. So I assumed that someone was dead. I called back, terrified of what I was going to get.
She just wanted to tell me not to return my Gilmore Girls DVD to Wal-Mart because she’d found the receipt to exchange it for the proper season at Target :rolleyes: . And then she didn’t understand why I was so freaked out to find NINE MISSED CALLS on my cell phone without a message.
Now that I don’t work from home anymore, my phone rings a lot less. I really like it. And those who do call leave detailed messages (except for my mother).
E.
Bless you child, bless you, bless you.
Honestly, if people just used pointer #1, think of what you’re going to say, and add “think of the fact that some answering systems have time limits on the message”, that would solve most of the problems. I’m sure if people thought of it they might realize “Hi, call me!” is a damn lame message, unless all your friends have absolutely nothing better to do than chat with you.
I feel your pain. I think people who grew up before caller ID/ call logging just don’t get the psychological impact of seeing the missed calls. Their mindset is still that if they didn’t talk to you, you don’t really know that they called.
Oh, those chipmunk on speed phone numbers! What I find specially ironic is the ‘speedup’ guys. They pronounce each digit of the area code slowly and distinctly and then the exchange is softer and in one clump while the last four digits are a rushed blurred together mess. LIke this:…4…0…1 123 3221 Grrrrrrrr. Hey, I know where you live, I could figure out the six digits easily, it’s the last four numbers that matter!
Oh, and while you’re leaving your callback number, couldn’t you also include any relevant info about WHEN to call back? “I’ll be in the office until 4”, “I won’t be home until after 9 tonight”, “I’m leaving on a slow boat to China on Tuesday so I need it before then”
Would it kill you to add that to your message?
Hey! How come you didn’t return my call? Fucker.
You know, I don’t care. I’m from the young generation, but I don’t particularly like leaving a message if I don’t have a reason to. If I was just calling to chat, chances are I won’t leave a message at all. I don’t want a damn call back if I didn’t leave a message. If I didn’t leave a message, it’s because I didn’t want to be called back. Jesus, how did people ever survive without caller ID if they get like this over every missed call?
AMEN! I’m another one who hates to leave messages. It seems so impersonal. If I need to communicate with someone and they don’t answer, I’ll just hang up and try again later. Obviously, if there is some time-sensitive piece of information they need, I’ll leave a message, but otherwise, I don’t talk to machines.
I’m one of those people who doesn’t normally leave messages.
If I called you up just to chat, or to let you know I’m headed home from work, it’s very unlikely that I’ll leave a message.
I do this because I hate voice mail. I have trained Mr. Neville not to leave voice mail messages on my cell phone unless it’s really important.
I grew up with answering machines (and still have one at home). I touch one button, and the messages all play, and life is good.
With my voice mail, I have a three-digit number to call voice mail, a four-digit password, and then I have to press 1 to get each message to play. And it gets snotty about my leaving messages I’ve heard there for a while- keeps pestering me about what I want to do with them. On top of that, there’s no skip button, and no way to delete a message mid-message. Grrrr.
This isn’t necesarily the fault of the caller. My phone doesn’t show both a “new voice mail” message at the same time as it shows the “Missed call” message. Generally it shows the missed call message first, and then ONLY after I’ve called the person does it then pop up with “new voice mail”.
And it is just as annoying and time wasting to me, when I’ve called back a coworker to find out they already left a message when I missed their call, only I didn’t KNOW it until I called them thanks to the way the stupid cell phone screen works.
Yeah but there’s a big difference between “One Missed Call” from Excalibre and “Nine Missed Calls” from Excalibre. One missed call suggests, “Oh, I missed his call. I’ll call him back when I get the time.” Nine missed calls from the same person can feel like, “Holy shit! Why did he try to call me nine times? Did someone die? Was my dad in a car accident?!” There’s a sense of urgency when you see someone has been repeatedly calling you.