Your Outgoing Message Is Too Long!

[So is this. But it's a blog...]

We all know what do after the beep. We all know who you're living with and we all know who we can leave messages for. We don't need to hear it EVERY-SINGLE-TIME-WE-CALL-YOUR-PHONE! Please, make your outgoing message clear and succinct and lose the redundancy.

(How many of you have a sign above your toilet that reads Please Flush? Is there a sign on your car that reads Open Door, Climb In, Close Door? Didn't think so. We all know what to do.)

Don't worry about being unique - your uniqueness comes across in the tone and character of your vocal delivery. In this case it is not about length. Short is better. Just make it count! If you absolutely can not shorten it (hint: try simply stating your name.) then please leave the numeric code needed to bypass your phone message at the very beginning of your message.

Have any of you become aggravated at the sound of your friend, lover, client, or business partner's voice after hearing it say the same thing god-only-knows-how-many-times? And you really want to leave a message and you really want to be nice and you really just get frustrated and hold the phone away from your ear and wait till you hear the faint, yet piercing, little beep.

Now your stuck trying to regain your composure and your trying to regroup and focus on what it was you needed to tell them and you're telling yourself you are not going to lay into them for their frustratingly redundant message that actually ends up wasting a large chunk of your life's time!

[Waste time? Sure does. Do the math: Take 1 person you call 3 times a week. Outgoing messages are typically any where from 4 to 8 seconds. Let's just call it 5 seconds and see what happens: (I stopped calling people with songs on their outgoing messages - 10+ seconds long - years ago.)

3(calls/wk) x 5(seconds) = 15 seconds/week.

15(sec) x 4(weeks)= 1 minute/month.

1(min/month) x 12(months) = 12 minutes/ year.

12 minutes a year spent spent waiting for the beep!

Big deal? Go sit in a corner and listen to your favorite outgoing message looped over and over for 12 minutes straight and then tell me it's no big deal. (For those of you still paying for a per minute cell phone plan you may want to consider billing people with long outgoing messages.)

And that's just one person. I am sure you all call at least 2 other people a week with 5 second outgoing messages. Now you're up to 36 minutes a year. Know that you have the formula down just keep on multiplying. Have fun! Share the formula with your loved ones...

And for those of you "creative types" who just can't resist having a song play in the background as an intro to your personal commercial: Change the music every week, at least, and state the numeric code necessary to bypass it. I don't know about you, but I turn my music down to make a call, not up.

Feel you need to leave an alternate # that you "can be reached at"? Don't - unless you ALWAYS answer it. If you answer calls and check messages on the number you gave me I should have no need to leave the same message else where, which is what will happen when you don't answer the other number that you "can be reached at." Make it easy for me to leave a message otherwise I'll stop leaving them.

Please don't even get me started on people who call and leave a message saying, "Hi it's me! Give me a call! Bye."