Taking A Stand: Leave a short message at beep

What’s with people who have to leave a veritable rendition of “War and Peace” on your answering machine? Can’t people just come to the point?

If you’re anything like me, then you hate long messages. There’s nothing that chaps me more than someone who calls my cell, work or home and gets the machine and then proceeds to go on and on without promise of ever stopping. I mean, come on, if I’m not there then leave a message and number for me to call you back. Don’t go into an endless diatribe where you repeat an arcane point five or six times.

Frankly, if a person rattles on for long enough, I generally hit the fast forward button and delete it anyway, even though I have misgivings about doing so should there actually be an important message at the end. However, I figure if they can’t marshal their main thought within 30 seconds, then their point is probably too unfocused for me to understand anyway.

Sometimes it’s actually comical as you can hear the wheels turning in the person’s mind while they leave the message, almost like they’re bouncing ideas off the wall in some kind of recorded brain storming session. And yes, some folks, I can tell, forget what they called for in the first place as they get caught up in recording a message like they’re Elvis recording a cut in Sun Studios or something.

And yes, it is generally folks I know who go into these monologues, even though they should realize my utter disdain for long messages. I think sometimes they do it just to get my goat. Of course, by the same token, working at the paper, I have folks who want to tell their entire story to my answering machine. Hey, if it’s not Watergate quality, the chances of me listening until the cutoff beep are nonexistent. And, by the way, if you ever get cut off while leaving a message, you know, when you hear that you’ve-used-up-all-your-time beep, then let that be a wake up beep and realize you’re too long winded.

The best rule of thumb is to tell what you’re calling about and leave your name and number. Anything going over 30 seconds is a waste of your time and mine and likely means you’re droning on and on.

And, by the way, the person who leaves the message is not always the only wordy one. Sometimes the answering message itself can be antagonizing. Hey, I used to have a stupid, long message myself, that is, until I listened to it all the way through once and realized I was part of the problem. That’s why I have shortened it to include just the basics.

Of course, there are many people who think cute and long are good things. I say they stink. If you call and don’t get them, well, you’re already annoyed as it is. To have to listen to them drone on before you can leave a message is salt in the wound, especially if it’s a machine you get all the time and have to listen to the same old foolishness. Hey, I was guilty, maybe not to the extreme, but still, mine were irritating. And folks, kids on answering machines may be cute to you and their grandparents, but leaving their barely audible greeting on full-time only makes callers root for them to grow up and go to college soon.

I’m not saying a person who has bad answering machine manners is a bad person, I’m just saying they are an irritating person who is asking for the “ff” button to be pushed.

Duane Sherrill is a reporter for the Standard. He can be reached at 473-2191 or by e-mail at [email protected].