Voicemail Etiquette For Dummies

You will not start sputtering out run-on sentences at 90 mph, with no pauses while I frantically try to jot down any discernible piece of information that I can use to decipher who the heck you are and what you need.

OH of course you will! You enjoy imagining me hunched over my desk with a steno pad and pen hitting the repeat button every 3 seconds.

“hierinthisisbl??ry??andineedyoutocallmebackrightawayat…”

When you tell me your name, S L O W D O W N just a tad so that when I go into our records to search for you, I know whether to hunt for Adele LaVance, or Adela Vance.

Which brings me to my next point: You will calmly, and in a carefully controlled manner, recite your phone number, area code first… TWO TIMES, so that I can accurately transcribe it to my post-it.

… Oh who am I kidding?

No you won’t. You’ll yammer for 7 minutes before dashing through the number only one time so that I can’t possibly make heads or tails of it.

“Heeeeey Erin, How are you? (I never understood asking how someone is on a voicemail). Things are good here. We got some chickens… 4 big leghorns. Also, we got this cat, and it’s orange… He’s a pretty good mouser.. Our dog, Brutus, remember him? Well.. blah blah blah blah … boop boop boop boop.. wah wah wah wah wah wah… *7 minutes later* Well, I have that 200 dollars that I owe you. If you want to get it, call me back. If you call at about 10:30… I should be home. Well, actually… any time after 10:35… But if you wait until 11:00… that may be too late… Aaaaanyway… Call me back. I’m at, 2546??92??1.”

SERENITY NOW.

You see? Now I have to restart and go through that entire slow-ass boring message again to TRY to make sense of it.

I hate when people don’t have good phone number rhythm.

“You can call me at 254eight……..teen31.”

“DUDE I already wrote the 8 too close to the dash!”

Another thing some of you enjoy doing in a voicemail: SPELLING OUT YOUR ENTIRE EMAIL ADDRESS WITHOUT SAYING IT.

“Yeah, you can email the documents to me at, J-E-R-K-F-A-C-E-ampersat-E-M-A-I-L-dot-F-A-I-L.”

Extreme ID-10-T error.

Thanks for reading!

By:

Erin Cinek. That’s E-R-I-N, not A-A-R-O-N. (But that’s another story. About an interview I once had with some corporate HR guy who kept applying Carmex with his middle finger in this hideous circular motion. And if I need to tell you what it reminded me of, then you are reading the wrong blog today, my friend.)