Posted by QuickReadAbout.com Staff in Technology can help us and drive us to despair and sometimes manages to do both at the same time. My answer machine is an example. I like being able to screen my calls, especially if I’m busy doing something. The other boon is getting important messages when I’ve been out. The annoyance comes from how people use an answer machine. Faced with one, some perfectly intelligent people turn into imbeciles, leaving long, meaningless, rambling messages. Before I got my digital model, these sorts of messages would fill the cassette up in no time.
The other sort of annoying caller is the one who lets the answer machine turn on, says er, it doesn’t matter or some such nonsense and then hangs up. Why are people frightened of them? Although they’ve been around for a long time, a lot of people seem genuinely surprised to have encountered one. It’s as if they’ve just landed on an alien planet and had no prior knowledge of them.
Worse still, are the people that I call, only to find a jokey message on their machine. This is especially cringe worthy when a couple have made, what they think, is a cute little message together. They take their turns to speak and then crack up into uncontrollable hysterics. Some people seek to confuse, by pretending to be somebody else. What a hoot. Recently, fake celebrity answer machine messages have come on to the market. You can buy these gems and install one in your machine. They are recorded by someone imitating John Wayne or Michael Jackson, and are meant to be incredibly hilarious.
Work related calls fell off with the increased use of email, I’m glad to say. Sometimes, my boss or colleagues would ring up about an impending meeting and leave a message on the answer machine. They would go into great detail about something they were going to bring up in the meeting, and then go thru it all again at the actual meeting. It wasn’t interesting the first time around.
There is a convenient plus side, when you’ve got something awkward to say, and you can ring someone when you know they’ll be out and leave a message on the answer machine. It’s easier to deal with the machine than the actual person. You may want to get out of some social obligation and give an excuse. It serves its purpose when you don’t want to get into a conversation about something.