I make a lot of calls at work, and I hear this a lot on people’s answering machines or voicemail, “Please leave your name, number, and the time you called…”. I just called a coworker’s home, and it’s on her machine, too.
Why do you want to know what time I called?
At a business, I could imagine that it might be useful to have a reminder of what region you’re in before they call you back, as I assume there’s a time stamp on any VM system anyway. I dunno, I got nuthin.
Although if I had this on my VM at home, and you said you called me at 3AM, I probably would reconsider our friendship.
I can think of lots of messages where you might want to know what time the call came in:
“Hi honey, there is a seat on an earlier flight so I’m getting on a plane in 15 minutes. Call me if you get this message in time.”
“Steve, this is your mother. C’mon, answer the phone! I know you’re home right now, and if you aren’t, you should be.”
“Mom, um, don’t panic but we were in a little accident, um, the police are taking me to the station now.”
“Suzy? You have GOT to see this! That geek from physics class is on Channel 53.”
“We’ve got some extra steak we’re about to throw on the grill, if you can make it over here in the next hour or so, why don’t you join us for dinner?”
“Beth’s water broke! We’re on our way to the hospital now!”
Etc., etc.
Two reasons:
To know if its worthwhile to bother responding. Like, say, the message was three weeks ago last Sunday, I’ve seen you 4 times since and didn’t care to talk to you anyway.
Establish an alibi.
Oh, yeah… okay. So there are reasons, I guess. I really could not think of why someone would routinely want the time of the call stated, but I guess when you really need it, you really need it, so some people will just flat out ask for it from everybody. You have to admit, though, that it’s pretty silly and redundant also, as well, and too, to ask if you have caller ID or voicemail.
I needed that little flirt, too- my fish died. I think it was the cat, but I can’t prove anything. I could be next.
Our (thankfully, now old) phone system required you to press a weird combination of keys while the message was playing to get the time/date stamp. I could never remember what they were, and I didn’t always need to check and interrupt each message to get the time stamp.
But, sometimes people would leave vague emails, like “call me tomorrow” and I didn’t know if it was left the day before, and tomorrow is now today, or left today so tomorrow is tomorrow!
So… asking for time/date was critical!
My voicemail on my cell phone (Verizon) does not have a time stamp feature. I really hate not knowing when someone left a message. I never thought of changing my VM greeting to ask people to include the time.
I like to know what time you called so that I can both determine the urgency, and determine whether I’ve spoken to you since you’ve called.
It’s simple.
In a work environment, there are several methods of communication. Face-to-face, phone, voicemail, email.
Let’s say I leave you a message - “We need to talk about project X immediately”.
But five minutes later, I run into you in the hall. We discuss project X and agree on a course of action. Should you check your voicemail 30 minutes after this - you might be left wondering whether we need to discuss project X if I haven’t told you what time I left the message.
Leaving a “time called” makes communication much easier. By habit now I do it for every voicemail I leave, work-related or personal.
My answering machine is ludicrously complicated to set the time/day on, and loses those settings whenever there’s a power fluctuation (which at times seems to be weekly). I hate when I realise there’s a message on the machine and I have no idea how long it’s been there. The only thing I can be sure of is that it wasn’t “3:23am Thursday”, despite what the machine asserts.
We get a lot of calls from Europe from friends who have odd hours (work schedule, or just up late after a night out) and it lets us know if we can call back now, or if we should wait until tomorrow.
Granted, most who call at 2AM their time are pretty much blotto, but still - we could call them back if we felt like it.
Also, as a teacher, when someone calls and says, “Give me a call if you can quick cover my class…” it helps to know if they called five minutes ago, or five hours ago.
Funny, the hard part now as the caller is knowing whether to start the call with “hi, this is myname and it’s timeofday…”, or whether the voicemail/answering machieme has already timestamped my message for you.
I tend to start all messages with the time and only leave it off if I know that their VM system will include it.
hijack …
I can remember when answering machines first became commonplace & folks had elaborate greetings telling people how to use it and apologizing for the lack of social niceties. Nowadays as a caller I’d much rather hear “This is Bob’s phone. Beeeep”.
Oddly enough, in the last 30 years most of us have learned what to do next. I find the 15-30 seconds of waiting while Bob yet again explains that he’s not available (duh!) and that I shoud talk after the beep (duh!), and say somethign useful (duh!), including pertinent facts (duh!) to be annoying & frustrating. If most of Bob’s callers are lame enough need that info, I don’t think I want to associate / do business with Bob.
I offer the time if its pertinent, and I expect others to do the same (for personal life stuff). I nearly never miss a business call, and caller ID tells me when it came in.
At the office, if we have a lot of projects on the go, it can be an utter nightmare when email isn’t working and messages come out of order. Likewise, it’s often helpful to know when a phone message was left, because the issues therein may have already been addressed on another phone line, email or in person.
Providing a time is also helpful for general context. For example, a message on my voicemail at work was asking me a question, but the question was no longer relevent because by the time I got the message, we’d discussed the issue in meeting and the question was answered. If I had no timing context for the question, the message would have been confusing.
My work voicemail has a time stamp. If my cellphone is turned off, there is no time stamp (actually I think there is, but I haven’t fiddled with the settings to turn it on.)
If you have Verizon Wireless, you have a timestamp. Press 5 while the message is playing to hear the number that called you and the time of the message.
I knew several people twenty-five years ago who vehemently said they’d never leave a message on an answering machine no matter what, and I’ve always wondered if any of them stuck to that resolve.