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/Voicemail
Feb. 28th, 2005 10:26 amAs anyone who tries to contact me knows, I'm, um, not scrupulous about either answering the telephone or checking voice mail. Email or text messaging is *far* more reliable... I'm more likely to see and respond to an LJ comment than to a voice message.
In large part, this is because I've come to subconsciously associate the telephone, and phone messages in particular, with negative inputs. No one leaves me a voice message that they admired my paper or want to give me an award or have accomplished a task -- those generally happen via paper or e-mail. Voice messages are telemarketers, collection agencies, Bank of America wanting its government travel card balance (that alone has caused me to stop checking my work voice mail), or someone in management either chiding me or giving me some assignment that they knew I wouldn't like (and hence didn't tell me in-person). Or sweeties leaving angsty "call me" messages that leave me stressed for hours or days until I can finally reach them and figure out that I didn't screw up.
So, I let my work voicemail box fill up such that no new messages can be left, thereby blocking the nuisance callers and forcing management to put things in writing to me. At home, I don't even check my answering machine, other than to delete messages once every two or three months -- the signal to noise ratio there is so low that it isn't even worth bothering to check it unless caller ID shows a recent call from a friend or partner.
The only voice messages I routinely check are on my cellphone, which number is kept private (because it is work-paid, among other reasons). Even there, it may be 2-3 days before I clear out my messages, so that's not a fast way to reach me. You have been warned... ;^)
In large part, this is because I've come to subconsciously associate the telephone, and phone messages in particular, with negative inputs. No one leaves me a voice message that they admired my paper or want to give me an award or have accomplished a task -- those generally happen via paper or e-mail. Voice messages are telemarketers, collection agencies, Bank of America wanting its government travel card balance (that alone has caused me to stop checking my work voice mail), or someone in management either chiding me or giving me some assignment that they knew I wouldn't like (and hence didn't tell me in-person). Or sweeties leaving angsty "call me" messages that leave me stressed for hours or days until I can finally reach them and figure out that I didn't screw up.
So, I let my work voicemail box fill up such that no new messages can be left, thereby blocking the nuisance callers and forcing management to put things in writing to me. At home, I don't even check my answering machine, other than to delete messages once every two or three months -- the signal to noise ratio there is so low that it isn't even worth bothering to check it unless caller ID shows a recent call from a friend or partner.
The only voice messages I routinely check are on my cellphone, which number is kept private (because it is work-paid, among other reasons). Even there, it may be 2-3 days before I clear out my messages, so that's not a fast way to reach me. You have been warned... ;^)
