A few years ago, my dad was having some fun recording weird messages into the answering machine.
For some reason we left the house before he recorded the real message, so when somebody called they got this:
[senile old man voice]
“Hi, Martha. We knew it was you so we didn’t answer the phone. You can leave a message, but don’t expect a call back! Hahahhahhahah!”
[/senile old man voice]
When we got back home later that night, there were several messages on the machine from people who “must have the wrong number.”
A friend of mine has the succint “This is a machine, you know how to use it.”
When I was doing callouts at my job a while back one the machine’s was good enough that we marked the number and every tech called just to hear the message. The guy had done a whole mission impossible thing. “Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to leave a message” etc etc.
I knew a fellow years ago whose message had very loud music playing while he said, “Hello?..Hello? What’s that? I can’t hear you!”
One night I went out with a woman friend who was in a terrible mood; she recorded this before we left, “You don’t want to know how I’m doing! Do yourself a favor and call somebody else!”
When my dad and stepmom first got an answering machine many years ago, they asked me to come over and set it up. I hooked it up and showed them the light that would indicate messages, how to retrieve them and showed them how to hold down the button and record a message by recording a sample message that I was sure they’d replace with their own. A week later they asked me to come by to show them how to record a message again, as their friends had been coming by unannounced. They’d left my sample message on, which said (and I sounded like my father), “Leave us alone!”
My last name - due to marriage - is Arndt. Like Aren’t.
The fun I have had with this name is nearly endless. My VM at work use to be
“You’ve reached the desk of Shirley Arndt.
I arndt on the phone.
I arndt at my desk.
and I arndt working. (deadpan) ha ha.
Leave you’re name, number and a brief message and I’ll get back to you ASAP. I arndt kidding.”
Everyone loved it and *would you beleive * that I actually had one woman chew me out because she said that my message was improper use of the english language…and then I pointed out nicely that my last name was ARNDT and it was a play on the name. She was mortified.
The message on our machine at home use to say, ** " You’ve reached Arndt Home. We knew you were going to call so we up and left. **
Then the kids erased the message and I cannot remember how to re-do the dumb thing.
My mom used to have “Hi, you’ve reached -_. You know what to do. [beep]”. Ouch, I thought.
I had a voice teacher, an excellent soprano, whose message consisted of her husband, a pianist, playing sloppy arpeggios while she shrieked them hideously / hilariously. There was a calm voiceover saying “We’re having a lesson right now…”
My favorite answering machine message happens to be my own. Me and my roommate sung it accapella, myself providing the bass. (names changed)
To the tune “Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego”:
Oh we really are quite sorry
Steve and Eric missed your phone call,
We’re not here right now but when we are
we’ll give you a call back,
So please just leave your name and number
and a message at the beep now.
Tell me where in the world did Steve and Eric go to.
My brother is David Letterman’s Biggest Fan, and when he was in the Air Force, his answering machine message was a different Top Ten List every day. Of course at some point his phone number found its way on to a men’s room wall. So every day he’d come home from his work shift and find something like 75 messages waiting for him. Almost all of them would be the sound of a guy laughing and hanging up, over and over and over.
He said it was hard coming up with ten funny things on one topic every day, so sometimes it was the Top Four List or the Top Seven List instead.
Latino, welcome! Your song is funny. Wish I could hear it.
A friend of mine is friends with a well-known Broadway actress. I called his place once and she had recorded the answering machine message. It was so freaky to hear that familiar voice talking to me.
“Hi this is Ralphie, leave a message after the beep. Oh, and leave your phone number, because with my busy schedule, I do not have time to look up numbers.”
It really isn’t that funny just reading it, but when I heard it, I couldn’t stop laughing.
There was a guy at my office whose voice mail message was HIM speaking as if he were his own secretary. “Hello, this is Mr. XYZ’s secretary, Mr. XYZ is unable to take your call…” The dude didn’t have a secretary, and probably hadn’t had one in 15 years! Totally surreal…
Ages ago, when they were filming the American version of “Max Headroom”, one of my friends (a big movie geek who haunted the studios and had “connections”) gave me the number of the offices of the producers of the show. Apparently the guy who played Max (Matt Frewer) had graciously recorded a message for the answering machine. Frewer recorded the message in character as Max (a computer-generated character) and it was somewhat risque in content. I can’t remember the whole thing all these years later, but I do remember one line, which was something like, “say something dirty to me and make my floppy disks stiff.”
Of course, as soon as enough of us fans started calling up the machine to listen to the message, they had to go and change it. Bummer…it was pretty damned hilarious.
“This is auRa’s answering machine. If you are auRa’s friend, press 1. If you are a telemarketer, press 2. If you do not identify with either of the preceding categories, press 3. If you have realized by now that this pressing of buttons will not do you any good whatsoever, please leave a message after the tone. Alternatively, keep pressing buttons randomly until something happens.”
On my cell phone a while back. I would get messages amounting to “beepbeeeeeeepbeeeeeeeeeeeep this isn’t worki…aw crap” all the time.
My friend had a rather interesting one, too. “Hello, this is friend. I am now going to read the first chapter of “Tess of the Durbervilles” into this machine. If you actually bother to listen the entire thing, your message is obviously of some importance and I will take it into consideration.”
“Hi, we’re probably in, but we’re trying to duck a call from someone. Leave your name, and if we don’t get back to you, it was you!”
But that had to go as it was alienating too many people. So then we had:
“Hi this is longjohn’s toaster, I’m afraid the answering machine can’t make it to the phone right now. Leave a message and I’ll pass it on.”
We also had
“if you’ve been a bad boy and need spanking, press one. If you want to hear what oral laura’s doing to hefty Harry, press two…”
That one had to go after Granny rang one time and I wasn’t in.
Years ago, when you actually recorded your outgoing message onto a cassette tape, a mate used to substitute the BBC’s recording of the original Hitch Hiker’s Guide radio series, or himself reading selections from Edgar Allen Poe. We’d ring up every week to get the next installment.