I hate leaving a message … as well as hate how long your messages on my cell are m’dear. Make your point quickly so I can delete and call you back or annoy the hell outta me til I don’t want to bother. I am just an annoying pain in the arse ya know… and no… you had a stalker before… isn’t me.
What Poly said. If I have a specific question or message I’ll talk to the machine, but if I’m just calling to shoot the shit with somebody then I won’t leave a message because I really had nothing important to say in the first place.
[Moderator Hat ON]
Off to IMHO.
[Moderator Hat OFF]
Yeah, people are annoying. I’d much rather talk to a machine, and I’m always relieved when I get one.
I hate people who do this. If you are going to make me guess if you are home or not, I am going to make you guess why I called and wouldn’t leave a message.
There are too many cutsey telephone gadgets in use today. :mad: [sup]like “call waiting”[/sup]
I’ll leave a voicemail on mr.cynic’s cellphone, but only because if he misses the call, there’s no way of knowing who it was – no caller ID. So even though I don’t particularly like leaving messages, I’ll babble to the voicemail. Pretty much everyone else I’d call has caller ID, so I don’t bother leaving messages for them, they can see my name and call me back.
I like call waiting, actually – I can talk without having to worry that someone’s trying to call and talk to somebody else. So it stops people from being mad at me. I like that.
The times I don’t leave a message are usually when I didn’t have anything important to say. Stuff like “hey, did you hear that just now on the baseball game?” or “what are you doing tonight, you wanna play some video games?” or “I just read something cool in National Geographic about feral peanuts.”
If it’s something I feel would warrant a return phone call, I’ll leave a message.
By way of contrast, I don’t check my messages regularly, either. I wonder if that’s related for more people besides myself.
FISH
I playing “phone tag” with people. I also hate waiting for someone to call me back. Although, I must say, that I have a relative with whom I ONLY communicate with via voice mail. (Long story…)
Sorry i’ll try to leave shorter messages.
I was kidding about the stalker thing.. :)
Well, you could always not call the person again, if that bothers you so much.
They’re under no obligation to talk to you. If you’re calling them, you’re the one needing something from them, whether it’s information, a conversation, or whatever.
I do that because of my past in dealing with my mothers creditors and my stalker that Christina25 mentioned… I’m sorry u feel that way about a simple gadget. No one has the time these days to just wait by the phone and pick up on every call…
I work long hours almost everyday and do not find it funny to come home to a machine full of hangups. If you whould have left a message i could call you back when i got home and then pass out from my long day… Oh well, happier times ahead
I don’t understand the big deal about people screening phone calls. I would much rather have someone decide that they didn’t feel like talking to me right then than pick up the phone and talk anyway. I screen my phone calls and from my side, if I don’t pick up the phone, it means I’m busy or just not in the mood for a chat. It isn’t in any way meant as a “Oh God not HER again!” so I don’t take it that way when it happens to me.
This happened to me so frequently at one point that I changed the outgoing message on the machine to something like, “This is me, I’m not here, if you’d like me to get back to you, please please please leave a name and number and I will get back to you. Don’t just say, ‘hello, hello, hello’ and then hang up. Thanks.”
I’d come home to see 5 or 6 messages, all hang ups. Oh, and caller ID did nothing - all Out of Area.
99% of the calls I get at home are from telemarketers. So of course I’m not gonna pick up the phone before I hear who it is.
And 100% of the hangups are from those same telemarketers. Who’s going to call them back?
Well, there are the fools who keep telling me I’ve won a free trip to Orlando from a contest I never entered… and they don’t understand that Orlando is the last place I would visit even if it’s “free.”
Why? I’d visit Orlando.
On subject: there are multiple reasons:
- don’t have a monologue prepared;
- don’t think it’s important enough to leave a message;
- don’t like the way your voice sounds when played off an answering machine;
- need instant feedback.
Because sometimes it’s easier not to bother leaving a message if all I wanted to do was to see if you were up for something on the fly. If you’re not answering your phone, then there’s not much point to a message… is there?
Although sometimes it IS easier to leave a message on the answering machine or voice mail… it’s more direct when you don’t have to make all that irritating small talk with the person. Saves you at least a few minutes.
F_X
I’m with Polycarp and Diogenes. If I have something to say, I’ll say it, but if I’m just calling to chat, I usually don’t leave a message.
CJ
I hate answering machines because I’m self-conscious about my voice and the way I speak. Mostly because I’m not a native speaker, I think. I don’t like speaking at a machine without any feedback to indicate I’m being understood, and I don’t like the thought of my voice being recorded and played back on a speaker.
Thank You Sat On Cookie, I’m glad that im not alone and there are people who understand me. Thanks to all here that have backed me up. And for all the wasted time listening to an empty machine…
PLEASE PLEASE…Let It End… :smack: :smack:
I’d rather talk to a machine. I hate speaking on the phone, but I hate initiating a phone call even more - since I rarely call up someone to chat, the person I’m calling is inevitably not someone I’m looking forward to speaking to. If I can leave a message, I’m happier. Machines don’t ask questions with answers I’d have to think about. If they need to call me back, oh well, I’ve earned myself a little time to think about what I’m going to say when they do return the call.
On the subject of hang-ups, our answering machine won’t record a message if it’s just a hang up (dial tone) nor did the machine before it. I thought this was fairly common, so maybe if it’s really agrivating, a new machine is in order- both of them listed this as a “feature” on the box, btw. These aren’t expensive ones either, I don’t think that either of them was more than $25.