What's your voice-mail message?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I have Carl Kasell’s voice (NPR news announcer) - no, really. I won the prize on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me back in January.

Here is the message:

Hello, this is Carl Kasell from NPR, speaking to you from Roddy and (SO’s name)'s living room. It’s kind of a slow news day, so here I am, ready to take your message. We even understand foreign languages, so if you’re Japanese, dengon o onegai shimasu. Arigato.*

This last bit is necessary because my SO is Japanese and many of the people who call and leave messages don’t speak English.

*It means “please leave a message. Thank you”. There are other ways to say this, but this is the one my SO wanted to use. Carl does a passable job with this, but I was happy that he even tried. And by the way, it took over 6 months and a couple of nags to actually get the CD that had the greeting on it.

Roddy

22

I had what I felt was a clever one for a long time, but people complained it was too long and meandering. So… “Leave a message” as monotonously and cold as humanly possible. Now I get complaints that it’s curt. Well… I showed them!

23

Well, that’s pretty cool. Congratulations. Which game did you play, and what was the topic?

I’ve wondered how they delivered the prize. I imagined that having Karl try to leave the message remotely (on machines that allow it) would be a real pain. At least the CD gives you a permanent copy, but it also means you just have to play it into the phone handset, right? Not the best quality.

And you’d think they could do better than six months. Do you think the Japanese might have delayed things?

24

I know a guy who has that exact voicemail message. He is also the type of guy who would frequent the Dope, although I’ve never talked to him about it.

Where do you live? As opposed to on the level? Just give me general area of a state if you don’t want to get too personal.

I’m sure it’s just coincidence, but ya never know.

25

“wadda ya at bys, leave a message, ill call ya back”

26

My new name. :smiley:

27

I’ve had a few funny ones in the past.

“You’ve reached the number you dialed. Leave a message!”

“You’ve reached Lionne. Please leave your name, credit card number and message after the tone and I’ll call you back as soon as I’m done shopping.”

28

Since hospitals and other medical people won’t leave details on my machine unless I specifically say my name, my message is: You have reached the voice-mail of Khadaji. Please leave a message at the tone.

I have had some others in the past that I found entertaining, but now it is all business.

29

“Hello. You have reached an imaginary number. Please hang up, rotate your phone 90 degrees, and try your call again.”

30

“We’re watching TV at the moment and can’t be bothered to talk to you. If you want to leave a message… ah fuck it.”

This was actually on my family’s answering machine by mistake for a couple of days - my voice, of course. I got a message from my sister saying “Fuck you too,” a rather sniffy one from my great aunt, and the second day I got one from my mother going “CHANGE THE ANSWERING MACHINE MESSAGE!!!”

31

“Believe it or not, I’m not at home, please leave your message at the beep. I must be out, or I’d pick up the phone. Where could I be? Please leave a message!”
Not really. I’ve wanted to get a good quality recording of that as me singing it for my voicemail for many moons. I don’t know how I’d do it, though.

32

On the cell, it’s something like, “Hello, this is Telperien. I’m somewhere where I can’t answer the phone right now, so leave your name, number, and a message, and I’ll call you back as soon as I can.” We have no answering machine at home, because if someone doesn’t get us, they just call the cell.

33

“You know what to do” beeeep

When I had a landline, it used to be “Hi, this is Sapo, if you are not going to leave a message, please hang up before the beep. It is annoying to come home to 17 empty messages. If you are going to leave a message, you know what to do” beeeep.

34

“Please leave a message.” Beeep.

I sound incredibly perky on it which is wrong in many ways. Beeeep.

35

“This had really better be important 'cos I’m in bed with a gorgeous sex crazed supermodel with huge breasts”

“Actually that’s a lie, please ignore it and leave a message, I just may call you back” beeep

36

I now have the mechanical/robotic voice that just says “Please leave a mess-age”.

My previous message fooled a lot of folks. Callers would hear the phone ring 3 times, then I’d seem to pick it up:

(rhythmonly) “Hello…”

(caller) “Hi, it’s Mom. Are you going to be able to-”

(rhythmonly) “…I’m sorry, but I cannot take your call right now. Please leave your name and number, and I’ll return your call as soon as possible.”

(caller) “I hate this message!!”

37

Okay this one actually cracked me up. Nothing like a Newfoundlander

38

I just use the “fill in your name” automatic message thing on my voicemail. Which is quite funny:

" ‘Millit and Husband’ …is not available. Please leave a message."

People get a real kick out of the subject-verb disagreement.

39

I have to set this up a bit.

My girlfriend didn’t like my old message. It was something kind of snarky about telemarketers (from me? NO!), and she complained about it every now and then.

She also has the habit of hanging up in the middle of leaving messages. She has a very busy phone life, so it’s not uncommon to get a voicemail from her that goes “Hi, it’s me! I was just calling for, oh, hang on, it’s my mom,” click. And then no followup call to finish the message.

And finally, she’s one of those people who relies on the entries in her cell phone to store phone numbers, and has very few of them actually memorized. It was a major moment in our relationship when she was somewhere without her cell and was able to dial my number on someone else’s phone, off the top of her head.

Okay, so. A couple of months ago, I get a message that goes like this:

“Hey, babe. Y’know, I keep saying, I really hate your message. You really need to change it. I was thinking, maybe it could say something like, Hi, this is 206-…”

And there’s a brief pause, wherein you can hear her thinking, trying to remember what comes after the area code. Then she continues, glossing over the fact that she doesn’t know my phone number:

“…206, blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah… Oh, wait, hold on a second.” Click. Hanging up, interrupted by an incoming call.

Then she didn’t call back to complete her thought.

So I immediately changed my voicemail, as follows: “This is two oh six, blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah.” Beeeep.

My friends thought it was hilarious, even before they knew the story. And after I explained, they thought it was even funnier.

My girlfriend didn’t remember leaving the message, so I had to explain it to her, too. :smiley:

40

Both my home and cel #s have no outgoing message other than the generic automated one in the synthesized voice that comes with the phone.