I have a cat–whom I hired to get rid of mice–who does indeed receive occasional messages. But since I don’t speak cat, and he doesn’t speak English, there’s little I can do that makes him seem much interested in using these functions. One thing that has become very popular and annoying is people who have their infant children leave out-going messages which are simply incomprehensible.
IAS, different companies have different menus, and they just want to make sure you know how to use their various functions, I guess. I do agree, however, that the “mark as urgent” thing is ridiculous because the recipient won’t know that the message is urgent until he or she actually listens to it. And there is certainly no reason to push a number if you’re simply going to leave a message; just “leave your message after the beep” should be fine. Sometimes people want to page you, and not leave a recording, so it seems reasonable to me that you should be offered the ability to “leave a call-back number” if you wish to be called at a number which isn’t the one from which you’re calling (like, um, maybe your mistress’s number?)
And one new feature on my phone I like is “press 8-8 to call back the number of this message.” Then I don’t have to write down the number, or memorize it, if I want to respond immediately. There also is a way to leave a message for someone that will be delivered in the future, which I always thought would be great to use if you knew you were going to die. “Hi. This is the Walrus. I’m dead now, but you still owe me six dollars.” In the old days I used it to remind myself to do things I was bound to forget, but that’s not necessary now since most phones can do the same things with simple text. “Forwarding” messages seems to be something that descended from forwarding email; maybe someone said something that was particularly amusing, and you wanted other people to hear the original.
And keep in mind that many people still don’t use answering machines or voice mail or cell phones, and they need a little guidance to get started. I still have to point out to my mother (a nurse) that she has pages on her company-supplied phone that she hasn’t read yet. “Oh, that crazy woman who was suicidal? She paged me two months ago? I really should have called her by now.”–yes, that is a true quote.
But I still can’t understand why the Europeans and Asians are so fascinated by text messaging. When something is important, you can just leave a voice message. But they seem to “over communicate” simply because they have the technology to do it. (I think companies there don’t charge as much for unlimited messaging.) People do the same thing with email. And that stupid use of “leet” or whatever the hell it’s called is just silly. I have a full text keyboard on my phone and it saves virtually no time to type “u” instead of “you”–and it doesn’t make you seem cool to use it; it makes you seem like an airhead adolescent. I bought a used phone where someone had forgotten to delete the text messages, and most of them were simply inane, pointless, and most of all embarrassing remarks about which mall to go to next.
The only advantage to a text message I’ve ever had was during a long, boring Friday afternoon meeting when my phone was on “silent,” (but “vibrate,”) and a woman across the table very discreetly sent me a message that said: “How about that motel on the corner when we get out of here?”
*Max pressses 1, then proceeds to hurriedly type in “car crsh ppl dying send ambo”.