Could you please call my machine and leave a message?
I love you too.
I mean… whoops…
Heh. I called my MALE, BEARDED Russian language teacher “Mom” once in class. He thought it was a hoot.
Scott Kurtz, who draws the popular comic PvP, came up with a game based on this.
Also, the Brunching Shuttlecocks have weighed in.
This is one of my mortal fears. Every time I hang up after leaving a message, I get really worried that I transposed the names.
Oh, too funny!
My embarassing answering machine story: I had to call a few people this summer to let them know when we had scheduled them for doctor’s appointments. Some of the people were francophones, so I’d leave a message in French. My French is sub-par, but I get by just fine. Usually.
So I was leaving a message, and I got to a word I didn’t remember. So I paused to think. And my mind was blank. I swear to god I just didn’t talk for 30 seconds in the middle of the message. I finally stammered something out. :o
When newly out of nursing school I worked graveyard. Three days in a row I signed my notes, “Love Mary.”
I had to wait almost a year, until we had a whole new batch of interns and residents to live it down.
Yeah, a guy at work once did that to a client (“I love you, bye!”) and it was brought up at the full company meeting when he was called up to the stage for his 5th anniversary award. They usually have a couple of quotes about each person from their friends (“He’s known as the world’s biggest Harry Potter fan!” or “He always has candy at his desk when you’re feeling down”) and that was one of his. It must have been a couple of years ago and they’re still bringing it up.
That should make you feel better, Lissa 
Not an answering machine story, but related: I once got a call from Alice, one of Mom’s friends. She asked: “is your mother there?” I started to say “She’s out with my dad”, then decided to change the last two words to “her husband”. So naturally, I ended up saying “She’s out with my husband.” Embarrassing, especially considering I’m a straight guy who’s never been married…
It’s not so bad, AwSnappity. I only get made fun of every single time I go over to his house…
At work, I was leaving a message on someone’s machine, when I realised I hadn’t calculated a number they’d need. I couldn’t do it quickly mentally, and started to panic (I hate math) and did what I usually do if I’m on the phone, and need to figure something out: I smoothly asked if they would hold.
Then I put the answering machine on hold.
I was too embarrassed to come back, so I hung up. About an hour later, I called and left another message, complete with apology.
I was getting ready at work one day to make a TeleHealth video visit to a patient on a new system. It was the first call for a new system and I realized about 10 minutes prior to the call that I did not have the password to the system. So my office manager and I decided the fastest way to get the password would be to call the company rep who sold us the system. After the receptionist at the company assured us that no one other than the specific rep could help us we agreed to leave her a voicemail. While she connected us we went to speaker phone so we could continue to search through the operating materials for the password and discuss our backup plan if we did not get a call back from the rep in time.
Well, we realized we may have missed the “beep” at the end of her message because we were talking to each other over her voice and message. So we ended up leaving the following message:
“Was there a beep?” “I don’t know.” “Should we talk or wait for a beep?” (then we got tickled at each other and could not talk) “Should we hang up and call back?” “They know it’s us!” “Oh no!” Finally I got my act together enough to leave a message…by then we were bordering on hysterical laughter.
The rep called back in time to give me the password. I had to ask…“uhhh…did you get all of our message?” Then she started laughing also and said…“You mean…was there a beep? That one? Yeah I got it all. We all enjoyed it!”
BTW, we had a very good and productive video visit with the patient.
You want embarrassing? I’ll give you embarrassing.
Back in the early '90s, my sister and I were sharing a house. We bought an at the time state-of-the-art answering machine that used a regular C45 tape, and stored the outgoing message on the first few seconds of the tape. When we were setting it up, I was rehearsing the outgoing message, and was screwing around. I recorded the following message:
It all worked out OK, so I flipped the tape over, rewound it, and recorded a proper message. Everything was fine for the first few months. Then one day I came home and listened to the messages. The first was from my other sister: “Oh yeah? Well fuck you too!” The second from my elderly great-aunt: “Well I never!”, and the third from my parents: “Er… I think you should change that message”.
The machine, you see, didn’t delete messages, and the tape had been filled up. So my sis had seen the warning light, and just flipped the tape over, revealing my original message to the world…
I think jjimm has a sig line 
We had a client whose name was Mr. Jessup. My co-worker, for years, knew that one day she was going to gaff his name to : Mr. Dress-up. Fortunately, the day she did, the guy didn’t mind and took it with grace.
We also had a client (great guy) whose last name was Aho. I cannot tell you the delight we all had telling each other in loud voices - even with clients milling about - that there was some Aho on the phone to talk to you.
I like off-beat outgoing messages on my personal voicemail. Currently, you may sing if you wish to leave a message.
The only person who has taken me up on this offer, oddly, was calling from the provincial insurance corporation regarding an accident I was in. She left me two messages:
-
Oh. I have to sing. I don’t have a song. I’ll call you back.
-
ICBC’s usual canned “Please file a claim” message, sung like the evensong services held at some formal cathedrals.
She had a pretty good voice, too. It’s a shame the lyrics got garbled. To this day, though, my favourite OGM was very simple, and very confusing: “Hi.”
A little backstory - my best friend’s 3 yr old and I had a little running kind of joke that whenever she wore any kind of animal print she was a “hoochie mama’ .
She also knew how to record an OGM on my machine. Unbeknownst to me, the little sassy thing changed my message once when they were visiting. 3 DAYS later
my mother left me a message that I may want to change it. I listened to it, and there was the 3 year old voice stating " You’ve reached Hoochie Mama’s House, please leave a message.”
I wonder how many people heard it before I found out about it.
I was expecting a call (imminently) from my boyfriend, so I said, “Hey baby! how ya doing?” in a very sultry voice. It was my mom. :eek:
I used to occasionally work with a school called Convent of the Sacred Heart, and the office there drove me nuts. We began jokingly calling them Coven of the Sacred Heart, or Convenant of the Sacred Heart. I had to call a student’s family to let them know they had a meeting at the school, and left a message along the lines of:
“Hello, I’m calling about “Student’s” appointment at Coven…I mean Covenant…I mean Convent…”
So much for professional!
One time our OGM was just 2 minutes of us all doing monkey noises. My landlady even left a message!
We also had 'You have reached the Wocestershire sauce helpline… bit from SouthPark for a while too.
My answering machine was my pride and joy. It used to belong to someone in Star Wars!