Asechines, be fair here. Some people do sound like crap on the phone. If you know that you have a bad phone voice for whatever reason, why not have someone else do your message? First impressions count a lot in business, so it seems wise to let someone with a nice, professional voice do your message if that could be your first point of contact with clients, no?
Sure, but you don’t have to “get the girl to do it.” I am also calling bullshit on the idea that people expect to hear women’s voices on the phones. If they do indeed expect to hear women’s voices, they need to join the 21st century where women do more than just answer phones and work as admin assistants. This sounds to me like the same kind of attitude that expects every women in an office to cover the phones but the guys at the same level are never expected to.
I also would like to say that guys are more than capable of being receptionists and admin assistants, too. These are not sex-linked jobs.
So you are saying that you are really annoyed to even be calling them back at all? Maybe that should be your voicemail message then.
“Hi, I’m not in right now, but if you leave your name and number I will promptly drop everything and call back to listen to your whiney, bitchy ass.”
I’m afraid I just don’t share your feelings about calling people back, and communication in general. I rather enjoy it. And I do it when it’s convenient for me. 
It’s proved! I saw it on the internet!
A Google fight proves nothing. All you have to do is think about this one. The phrase “at your earliest convenience” should appear much more often in a written medium because there are always going to be more solicitations than responses. The first page of hits on Google for “at your earliest convenience”:
Did you really think there would be a ton of sites with people saying that they would respond to commercial web page solicitations at their earliest convenience? That’s like watching infomercials and then picking up the phone to call the sales people to tell them you’ll be buying their product as soon as you get your paycheck.
The first page of hits for “at my earliest convenience” looks like regular people getting along just fine in polite society by using this forbidden phrase. Oh, except for this guy. Boy does he sound like he has a major stick up his ass. He says:
As if there’s a problem with that. But even he admits the phrase has legitimate meaning, although he inject imaginary rudeness where none exists.
Oh, lookie what I found from George Mason University’s Information Technology Unit Customer Service page (my bolding):
Proof indeed.
Nope, sorry. 
Oh yeah, 'cause I want to get fired. Did you not see where I was talking about BUSINESS calls? Hi-larious, really.
Huh? I’m talking about calls I get from parents on my work voicemail. I know you’re trying to be funny, but you missed the point. Most of the time, when they call, it’s because something is a problem. Those conversations can be stressful, or even annoying, depending on the parent. Some of them are very productive and excellent, but you never know what you’re going to get until you make the call. But it can’t wait until it’s convenient for me because it never will be, and it’s people’s children we’re talking about. I’m a professional, so I call back ASAP. It’s not about my comfort level.
I’m afraid you actually have no idea what my feelings are about calling people back nor about communication in general. You took a couple of sentences from this thread and extrapolated the shit out of them and you think you can characterize my philosophy of human communication and telephone etiquette? Naw, I don’t think so. I think this is the Pit and you’re looking for reasons to argue. Why with me, I have no idea, but whatever.
FTR, I like talking to people. I talk to literally hundreds of people (most of whom are 11-14 yr. olds, which makes it better) per day at work, and I’m pretty good at it. Also used to be a receptionist and office manager back in the day, and my phone skills are excellent. But these days, business calls for me to return usually entail some degree of difficulty and diplomacy from me, so it can be chore that can’t wait until it’s convenient. Does that make sense to you? I hope so.
OK, but nowhere in my post did I say anything about “getting a girl to do it.” I just said, if a person wants to get someone else to do the message because he’s crappy on the phone, that makes sense to me. It’s more professional to get someone with a good voice on the message than someone who sounds like crap. The gender of the person on the message is of no moment to me either way, though you have to admit that office receptionist jobs are far more often filled women and not men, so it’s often a woman who deals with all the phone stuff for that reason alone. It’s not that men aren’t capable of doing the job, it’s just that they do it less often.
I don’t expect to hear anyone’s voice in particular when I call a business and get the voicemail, except that annoying automated voice that the OP was rightly bitching about. Hate that voice with a passion. Frankly, I never noticed that women do the messages more than men.
Stop using this word. You do not know what it means, and you keep using it incorrectly. The phrase “at my earliest convenience” is not an idiom of any sort.
It’s a stock phrase, whatever. You understand what I mean. It is not merely that a bunch of people just happen to be stringing words together to produce “at my earliest convenience.” They are thinking, “Oh, that’s that thing you say when making a VM message.”
If you have a better word for this kind phenomenon, please bless us with it, O Wise One.
Wow. I can’t believe you’re actually keeping tabs on this pathetic whining. I could see someone posting such an OP, and then cooling off and letting the thread die, but this is truly sad.
Surely you can think of several, more egregious types of language abuse. It fits the theme though. Please provide us with the perfect script for this situation. It can’t sound stupid mind you.
When you call any international corporation, you know that you are hearing the voice of someone who has been paid to make the recording. That same person might get paid to do the same thing for several corporations. If this practice does not make said corporation sound more professional, what would?
Only people that record their own messages sound professional? What manner of disabled person are you?
Thank you for keeping a vigilant eye on this matter. Voice mail is evil, and can only be mastered by evil-doers.
It’s nice to know that there’s nothing better you could be doing.
Yeah, a real fuckin’ tragedy.
I can. Here’s an example: Fuck you. That’s called “cussin’,” and it’s wrong.
Hi, you’ve reached Aeschines. Please leave a message, and I’ll return your call as soon as possible.
Huh? Most Japanese companies don’t even use VM, and most companies in the US simply have each individual person make his/her own VM message.
Yeah, not recording your own message seems toolish if you have individual VM.
You’re a fucking retard.
I’ve spent all of 20 minutes on this thread today. Go fuck yourself.
Actually, about 6 months ago I started a thread in IMHO about having a man vs. having a woman be the first contact someone has when telephoning a company. To my dismay, it came out fairly heavily in favor of it being a woman as opposed to it not mattering.
I have a question for those following this thread. While I’ve never used the phrase, “at my earliest convenience” on a voice-mail message, I do say, “I will return your call as soon as practical.” Is this better or worse? I don’t like saying, “as soon as possible” because it’s not true. If your call is something which will take several minutes to handle then I may take care of other, more pressing matters before I do return it. That could be putting groceries away, if it’s a call to my home phone, or having a brief discussion with my boss about what you’re calling about to if it’s at work. Most of the time, I’m not going to drop everything to return a call, which is what, “as soon as possible” implies to me or would if I didn’t recognize it for a polite fiction.
I agree, it can be pretentious as all hell… however…
I know of one “executive type” lady with damaged vocal cords who asked one of the staff who happened to be a trained vocal professional to make a series of voice mail messages for her so they would be clear and understandable, as opposed to the usual mushy quasi-death-rattle that comes across when she does it herself. Not an unreasonable solution to the problem if you ask me - if she didn’t have the “admin” do this you’d be bitching about how difficult it is to understand her voice message.
I also have had deaf co-workers who had voice mail messages recorded by people who can hear and therefore are more understandable over the phone. There is, of course, the nonsense involved in expecting deaf people to use a phone, but many intolerant customers have prejudice towards those who use alternative message systems, such as e-mail, and therefore the deaf must make accomodations.
And some companies have one person make ALL the messages in a depatment (or even company-wide) in an effort to strive for consistency and professionalism.
So yes, it can be pretentious bullshit or there can be legit reasons for the practice.
Wow.
Back when I was self-employed I did my own phone messages. I had no idea that, because I’m a “chick”, I was also using my own voice to “sound bigger”.
I’m sorry, was I supposed to hire a man to record my message so people wouldn’t assume there was more then one person at the establishment?
Over the past few years I’ve had a couple bosses (all male) who had their outgoing messages recorded by a woman. In one instance, he even scouted until he found a woman with a british accent to record the message (Neither he nor the company had anything to do with England).
Now, none of these men have bad voices. In fact, public speaking is part of what they do for a living. The use of a female voice for their outgoing messages is just another way to show their power and clout. In their world, only the lowly answer their own phones.
To me it’s honestly creepy that I encounter so many female voices on the other end of the phone whenever I call someone for business. It does not say ‘friendly’ or ‘pleasant’ to me. It says that women are expected to cater to the needs and whims of others, taking messages, serving the higher-ups.
Where I work the reception duties are handled entirely by the admin department. We have a full-time receptionist but need people to fill in for scheduled breaks. Although there are more than enough (male) people in Admin to cover these breaks, I was told I would have to handle some reception duties even though I work in governmental affairs. Why? Because “I’m a woman and that’s what people expect to hear when they call.”
Frankly, I find the sheer proportion of women in reception roles disgusting, but that’s another rant altogether.
I opened this thread expecting to see kindred spirits bitching about the kind of stupid voice-mail related crap that annoys me, such as:
[ul]
[li]Morons leaving messages like “Hi, I called with a question, but you’re not there, so I’ll send you an email about it. Can you answer it?” - Ummm, I answer any email that’s not totally stupid. Your voicemail has just wasted both our time.[/li][li]Listening to voicemail on speakerphone. Go fuck yourself with a razorwire dildo.[/li][li]People who don’t understand voice signatures Vs OGM, so you get the robo-lady going “you have reached the voicemail of…” followed by “umm, this is the voicemail of Bob Numbnuts, please leave a message” or even better, you receive an internal voicemal and robo-lady goes " Message from:" “hi, this is the voicemail of Bob Numbnuts, please leve a message”. That’s real smooth there, mr corporate professional[/li][li]People who don’t understand any fucking thing, so their OGM is all about how they’re going to be out of the office until Jan 3 2005, and what to do about it. Why not just record a message saying you’re too dumb to bother with?[/li][li]People who work in multinational organisations who leave long rambling OGMs in a non-english language. I can extract the alternative telephone number from many european languages, but please have mercy![/li][/ul]
But instead I just find a lot of generalised whining about how ugly people’s use of the english language is, and stupid stuff that stupid people do to look important. I want my money back.
Can someone please run a dollar bill through a microtome and post me a fragment?
OH MY GOSH. I was mostly kidding before when I speculated that this stupid phrase was making the rounds in a goofy handbook … and there it is!
I completely agree with number 3, it really is annoying.
It should be:
“Press X for a menu or leave a message” Done.
Can you link it? I have seen certain women handle phones/reception in ways no man could ever do.
My stupid thing? I am checking my mail and it always give me a time stamp before the message plays, but Dumbfark McGee has to repeat it in some neverending message that never conveys any information at all:
“Hello, this is dumbfark, It is Tuesday morning, Oh, I’d say about 11:22. 11:22 am. On Tuesday. Anyway, the reason I was calling was that I was just thinking, and I realized you needed to know the information that I was calling about today, so I am going to try and call you later unless you call me in which case I won’t have to call you. In any case, give me a call. Like I said, it’s about 11:25, on Tuesday. Morning. If you want to call me this afternoon, or tommoroww, or before lunch that will be fine. Talk to you soon.”