I’m sure I’m not the only one who would like to just leave a message sometimes.
In my case, it’s a woman I’m working on a committee with. She will call and leave a message on my voice mail that’s long and rambly but condenses down to a simple request like which caterer are we using or what is Judy’s phone number?
IOW, a legitimate question to ask me, and I’m happy to answer it, but I know from experience that getting OFF the phone with her by anything other than brutal rudeness requires a minimum of half an hour – and I’m just not up for it.
So, is there a magic number I can punch in and her phone never rings? So I can say “Hi, Judy, the caterer is Mindy’s Magnificent Meals at 123-456-7890. Bye!”
Anyone?
I have voicemail through the phone company. I can dial a phone number to check my messages. I forget how, but there’s a prompt which tells me if I want to leave a message for another subscriber to the same company’s voice mail service, then you can follow the steps and do so- the phone will not ring. I do it often for the reason you detail in the OP. If she has a voice mail system like this, then yes. If you don’t have it and/or don’t know if shes does, get the number for your phone compnay’s voice mail checking service and key in her phone number, if when you do it recognizes it and tells you how to leave a message for her, you’re set. Either that, or only call her when you know she’s not home.
The corporate voicemail systems I have used have this feature to leave messages for other employees. If she’s a coworker, you can probably do this. If she is with a different company, or you are calling her at home, probably not. The option is called “Record a Message,” then you send it to the person’s extension. Sometimes managers and high muckety-mucks set up voicemail distribution lists and send a voicemail message to everyone, for example.
You can try to call her on 2 phones at the same time, sometimes if the person answers one the 2nd one will go to VM, you can hang up the one that connects to her.
Kanicbird nice solution but can be foiled by call waiting. Many years ago I was meeting a friend for lunch, and he was late so I called him from a pay phone in the lobby of the resturant. He had just subscribed to the newest feature available, call waiting. As I talked to him I shoved a dime in the next phone and called him. He said, “wait, got another call”. and got me. He clicked back and forth several times always getting me. He cursed a blue streak about how the damn new service did not work. It was really a hoot. When I told him what was going on he laughed his butt off. Strangely, his phone has been on the fritz for many years now, he never returns my calls…
There should be an option to “leave a message for another extension” or something like that. Punch her extension and you’re all set.
If it’s her cellphone, call your own cell voicemail and listen for the same option. Can’t guarantee that because I believe you both have to be on the same carrier.
A “low tech” solution might be to record the message you want to give her on some device, such as a tape recorder, etc. Call her number, and when either she or the voice mail answers, play back the tape into your phone speaker. She doesn’t have to know that your live body is there listening to her.
Back before caller ID if I wanted to screen calls I’d pretend to be a answering machine. Family and friends knew I didn’t use a machine.
It usually worked.
Wooo. A neat assortment of possible solutions. Unfortunately I don’t think most of them will work in this case. For example, we work for different companies (this is a church-based committee) so we’re calling each other’s home numbers. And I refuse to email her because I don’t want to give her my email address. (I just know she’d send me glurge all the time.) Texting is a possibility though – I’m just so old that didn’t even occur to me as an option to consider.
I have hit on my own very low tech solution. It’s called a husband.
Hubby has agreed he will call this woman for me, say something like “SBS had to run off to help someone, so she asked me to pass along that the caterer is…blah blah blah.” He’s excellent at getting off the phone. I’ve actually heard him say, to one his best friends, mind, “That’s all I had to say, so goodbye” and set the phone down.
In exchange, hubby is earning brownie points, which can be cashed in for all sorts of things as he pleases.
OK easy solution for this one, call waiting will only activate when the line is in use, not when it’s ringing. So call both lines as close to the same time as possible. As long as the first line to get through just is ringing the second one will forward to VM (if there is VM service) and will not produce a call waiting beep.
In the Republic Of Ireland insertion of the number 5 in the middle of mobile phone numbers will bring you directly to the person’s voicemail (if they have voicemail set up).
So it would be something like, 08X 5 XXXXXXX
I’m sure this varies between different carriers, but I know that if you’re a Sprint customer calling another Spring customer you can connect straight to that person’s voicemail by dialing two “1’s” before the area code and phone number… e.g. 1-1-(XXX)-XXX-XXXX
Family and friends knew I didn’t use a machine.
